text:
Old Age in Australia
# Old Age in Australia

_A History_

Pat Jalland

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

11–15 Argyle Place South, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

mup-info@unimelb.edu.au

www.mup.com.au

First published 2015

Text © Pat Jalland, 2015

Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2015

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the _Copyright Act 1968_ and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Typeset by J&M Typesetting
Printed in Australia by OPUS Group

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Jalland, Patricia, author.

Old age in Australia/Professor Pat Jalland.

9780522867060 (paperback)

9780522867077 (ebook)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Older people—Australia—History.

Older people—Care—Australia—History.

Older people—Economic conditions—History.

Older people—Social conditions—History.

Nursing homes—Australia—History.

Retirement—Australia—History.

305.260994

## Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

**Part One 'The Forgotten People', 1880–1945**

1 Poverty and Prejudice, 1880–1908: Asylums or Pensions for the Elderly?

2 Older Women as Widows, Spinsters and Carers, 1880–1950: From Ada Cambridge to Mary Gilmore

3 Older Men in Victoria, 1870–1933: From James Henty to John Springthorpe

4 The 'Forgotten People': Poverty, War and Depression, 1914–1945

5 Generations and Gender: Old Age in the McCrae Family, 1874–1961

**Part Two Hope for the Future, 1945–1980**

6 The Brotherhood of St Laurence: Housing the Elderly from 1945

7 Victorian Social Surveys on Old Age, 1954–1975

8 'The Lobby Of Conscience' in NSW: Old People's Welfare Councils and Home Care

9 Geriatric Medicine: Early Achievements and Disappointed Hopes, 1954–1972

10 Nursing Homes as Big Business, 1954–1972: 'Inappropriate Places with Inferior Care'

11 The Debate on 'The Problem' of Retirement for Men, 1950–1980

12 Edna Ryan's Journal of Old Age, 1972–1994: Retirement Villages or Independent Living?

Select Bibliography

Index

## Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Australian Research Council for a three year Discovery Grant which provided essential funding for this project on the history of old age in Australia. My thanks also go to Russell Doust, Karen Fox and Ann Hone for their valuable contributions as research assistants at different stages. Karen Smith and Akita Hodgson did a splendid job of converting my manuscript drafts into electronic form, with remarkable speed, accuracy and good humour.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Joy Damousi, as Editor of the Melbourne University Press Academic History series, for her enthusiastic encouragement and thoughtful suggestions; and to John Hooper, for his wise advice and practical support from the outset. Pat Thane contributed invaluable ideas in the early stages of this project. Jim Hammerton, Di Langmore, Barry Higman, Nicholas Brown, Frank Bongiorno, Geoffrey Bolton, Ann Hone, Karen Fox and Jenny Harrison also gave very helpful comments on various chapters.

Permissions for quotations from manuscript collections have kindly been granted by the National Library of Australia (the Dame Mary Gilmore Diaries and the Edna Ryan Papers), by the State Library of Victoria (the McCrae papers), and by the Citizens Welfare Society of Victoria (formerly the Charity Organisation Society) for brief quotations from their files. Many thanks go to the staff of the National Library of Australia, the State Libraries of NSW and Victoria, and the J.S. Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia. My apologies to any copyright owners I have been unable to identify or locate.

Melbourne University Press staff have been very helpful throughout, especially Cathy Smith and Sally Heath; and my copy editor Penelope White. I am very grateful to Richard McGregor for his work on the index.

## Introduction

This book explores the history of older people in Australia during the century from 1880 to 1980. It aims to fill a remarkable gap in Australian historiography, in a relatively neglected field of increasing social, cultural and economic significance. The age at which 'old age' commences for individuals varies greatly with time, heredity, class, gender, health and living standards. In the course of the century from 1880 to 1980 life expectancy increased dramatically in Australia, as did the relative proportion of the elderly. People were seen to be aged considerably later in life by the twentieth century, and were more visible as well as more active. Despite such large variation over time, official sources have often tended to follow the Commonwealth 1908 _Invalid and Old Age Pensions_ Act in adopting a definition of old age as sixty years of age for women and sixty-five for men, however inappropriate in the earlier decades.

Since 1911 unprecedented demographic change has transformed experiences of ageing dramatically, altering our assumptions about ageing in Australia. Demographers have estimated that in 1861 only 0.9 per cent of the population was aged over 65, rising to 2.4 per cent in 1881, 4.3 per cent in 1911, 8 per cent in 1947, 9.8 per cent in 1981, and 14 per cent in 2011. Thus the percentage of people over sixty-five more than doubled between 1911 and 1981, and it is estimated to rise to about 18 per cent by 2021. The fastest growing rates will be among those over the age of eighty, who are likely to be frail and dependent for longer periods.1 An understanding of the history of older people in the century before 1980 is essential context for the current debate about the implications of ageing in the future.

In the nineteenth century there were relatively few elderly people in Australia, but by 1881 the proportion of the population aged sixty-five and over had more than doubled in twenty years. The 1880s are thus a reasonable starting point for this book. Further, the late 1970s and early 1980s represented a watershed in the history of the elderly in Australia and so I have used 1980 as an end date. The demographic transition to a higher proportion of older people was significant: at approximately 10 per cent of the population in 1981, with massive reductions in mortality and birth rates over the century which transformed the population's age structure. Indeed by the 1980s there were fears of an imminent ageing crisis which presented a significant social and political challenge.

There is a major turning point in the history of old age in Australia in the later 1940s. The elderly population had been seriously neglected during the preceding two world wars and the intervening great depression. The only important federal reform for older people in half a century was the introduction of old age pensions in 1908. The limited number who benefited received a means-tested pension worth only a quarter of the basic wage. The elderly poor suffered abject poverty in rented rooms in inner city slums during the economic depressions of the 1890s and 1930s. Those who succeeded in gaining entry to the overcrowded benevolent asylums were separated from spouses and lived in often appalling conditions. Plans to modernise housing and asylums were postponed indefinitely. Although the federal government introduced a 'welfare state' during the Second World War, there was little immediate benefit for older people, though indexation of pensions, long postponed, was at last introduced.

However, from the later 1940s there was belated consideration of the needs of the elderly, who were increasing in numbers and longevity. This was a significant turning point, led by the state of Victoria and more slowly by NSW. Philanthropists, journalists, clergy and compassionate citizens called for better conditions for 'the forgotten people', as the _Argus_ described the elderly.2 Despite extreme reluctance to intervene, the federal government belatedly responded in 1954 with the _Aged Persons Homes Act_ —only the second federal government initiative for the elderly in 75 years. A major problem throughout this time was the arbitrary division of responsibilities between state and federal governments in key policy areas such as geriatric medicine, nursing homes, and home and community care. The consequences were detrimental, stimulating the phenomenal growth of nursing homes which were condemned by many as offering inferior care. But despite slow and sometimes haphazard progress, conditions and life experiences for many older people gradually improved between 1950 and 1980.

This book is organised in two parts, with chapters on the major themes concerning ageing counterpointed by related biographical chapters on older people in Australia across the century. Part One analyses the aged as the 'forgotten people'—as contemporary newspapers called them—from 1880 to 1945. Part Two explores the hopes and plans for a new deal for the aged from 1945 to 1980. Major themes include the causes of poverty among older people, the awful conditions in the benevolent asylums, the gendered nature of ageing, the impact of economic depression and wars, the aged pensions debates, housing and social surveys for the elderly, old people's welfare councils, geriatric medicine, nursing homes and the retirement debates. The biographical chapters explore the very different histories of older people in individual colonies and states. New South Wales and Victoria receive principal attention as the oldest and most heavily populated states, which also boasted good newspapers. Archival, press and official sources have been invaluable for this project, especially given the remarkable dearth of monographs and journal articles about older people in Australia before 1980.

New South Wales and Victoria acted as important agents of change in ageing policy at critical times. New South Wales was particularly influential from 1896 to 1908 in promoting the urgent need for a progressive policy on aged pensions. Fifty years later Victoria led the way in recognising the crisis among the 'forgotten people'. Victoria was the first state to sponsor a serious social survey on old age in the early 1950s, and to encourage the development of appropriate housing and Old People's Welfare Centres. New South Wales followed Victoria's lead in these vital areas about five years later. New South Wales was more progressive in geriatric medicine from the 1960s, while Victoria was more effective in nursing home management. Other states followed their lead more slowly.

Four biographical chapters are interwoven with the thematic chapters to explore a range of individual experiences of older age, illuminating the realities of daily life. They draw on rare and often revealing unpublished diaries and family correspondence in state libraries, providing a daily narrative of how time was spent, the experiences of poor health and loneliness, and the advantages of wealth, family and religion. The four biographical chapters also illuminate the vital importance of gender in the historical experience of ageing. The demographic imbalance has shifted dramatically since the 1860s from an oversupply of males over sixty-five to the reverse. By 2031, women aged over eighty years are estimated to be twice as numerous as men. However, until recently social scientists, gerontologists and the press have emphasised male patterns of ageing, especially in relation to employment and retirement.3

The vulnerability of older age was compounded by gender and economic disadvantage, especially since daughters were expected to care for frail elderly parents. Even in the 1980s women were more financially vulnerable due to lower incomes, longer life expectancy and minimal superannuation. Edna Ryan observed, 'Individuals differ so greatly in their physical ills and ailments, their living conditions, their heredity, that few people would have exactly the same experiences as I'.4 These biographies also examine the changes across different generations, especially that unfortunate generation obliged to cope with both world wars and severe economic depression.

British, and more particularly English, influences were very strong in Australia in relation to such issues as aged care, pensions and social policies more generally, especially from the 1940s to the 1970s. This was a two-way process: Australian doctors, nurses, sociologists and bureaucrats travelled to Britain to learn from their new approaches to old age. Australians sometimes stayed in Britain for several years, as did Matron Muriel Doherty, returning to adapt British reforms to Australian needs in such areas as geriatric medicine and old people's welfare centres. Conversely, British experts were often invited to Australia to advise on aged care policies in these areas, and many remained here to add their own stamp.5

### The Comparative Demography of Ageing

The Cambridge demographer Peter Laslett has explained that the transformation of ageing in England from the 1890s was unprecedented and would in time be replicated elsewhere. Fundamental population change in England between 1890 and 1980 caused a prodigious increase in life expectancy and in the relative proportion of the elderly. Laslett saw the 1940s–50s as the major turning point in experiences of older people in Britain.6 Australia's demographic turning point came from the later 1940s to the 1960s.

Since 1980 concern about rapid population ageing has engaged widespread public attention in Australia. In 1991 the demographer Don Rowland charted the transformation of Australia caused by population ageing in the century following 1881. Like the United States and New Zealand, Australia was in a transitional demographic position between the 'younger' populations of developing countries and the relatively 'old' populations of Europe. Australia's transition to demographic maturity would be achieved in the early twenty-first century. Rowland predicted that older people over seventy-five would be a particularly rapid-growing age group in the future, especially after 2011, when many baby boomers turned sixty-five.7

The demographers J.C. Caldwell, Peter McDonald and their co-workers have explained that these 'profound' changes in population structure were caused by the decline in fertility from the 1870s and a more protracted decline in mortality. Fertility was reduced from 1871 because women married later and had fewer children. There was a rapid and continuous decline in family size from 6.8 births in the 1840s, to 4.2 in the 1870s and 2.6 births after 1903, reaching the modern pattern in only two generations. This decline in fertility was followed by a massive reduction in infant mortality between 1900 and 1930, from more than one hundred deaths for 1000 live births to less than fifty.8

However, the ageing trajectory from 1871 was uneven, reaching a peak in 1947, after which the baby boom caused its decline up to the early 1960s. This population boom was reinforced by an unusually high immigration intake in the post-war years. After the baby boom Australians aged persistently as birth rates fell: life expectancy at birth rose from less than fifty years in the 1890s, to seventy-two for men and seventy-nine for women by 1985. The proportion of people aged over sixty-five rose from 0.9 per cent in 1861 to nearly 10 per cent by 1981. All the experts agree that dramatic demographic change, if unabated, will have profound consequences for the future.9

### Economic Change, Politics, War, Medicine and Ageing

Economic changes, politics, war and medicine were increasingly major influences in the life experiences of older people after 1880. The catastrophic impact of the 1890s economic depression on elderly people, followed by a prolonged drought, was a powerful force encouraging politicians in NSW to favour the introduction of aged pensions. The cumulative impact of the two world wars and the terrible great depression of the 1930s also stimulated the drive to post-war reconstruction, though this did little initially to improve the lives of older people. However, these impacts did stimulate philanthropic organisations such as the Brotherhood of St Laurence to develop housing and other policies for the elderly. In 1954 the Menzies federal government belatedly intervened to encourage housing subsidies for the elderly through its _Aged Persons Homes Act_ —the first significant federal reform for the elderly in half a century. Otherwise federal and state governments were reluctant to fund reforms for older people, though Victoria was more generous than most from an early date. Such reforms received a substantial boost in the 1950s and 1960s from twenty years of economic boom, following thirty-five years of the restrictions of war and economic depression. Conversely, the recession and high unemployment of the 1970s clearly showed that older workers were effectively a reserve of labour to be used only when the needs of the economy demanded.

The medical revolution also played a major role in the history of older people in twentieth-century Australia, in vastly extending expectation of life and improving health in later years. In the nineteenth century death was omnipresent and life was often short and hard, with deaths of babies and young children common. Better nutrition, sanitation and living standards were vitally important, reinforced by public health reforms which improved water supplies and sewerage systems. A complex interplay of forces contributed to the decline in mortality, but the role of medicine was restricted until the 1930s. Medical therapy had a more direct impact on the decline in mortality with the introduction of the sulphonamide drugs in 1935 and penicillin during the Second World War. These 'miracle drugs' were highly effective against a broad spectrum of bacterial infections including pneumonia and diphtheria, and were mass-produced from 1943. A range of new drugs in the 1950s was valuable for meningitis and allergies, as well as vaccines for mumps, polio and measles.10

The impact of medical intervention slowed from the 1960s. It became all too clear in the later twentieth century that cancer, heart disease and the chronic degenerative diseases, including Alzheimers and Parkinson's, were still largely incurable, and their impact could only be controlled to a limited extent. From the 1950s degenerative diseases increasingly displaced infectious diseases as the major causes of death. By the 1980s most deaths were due to cancer, heart disease or stroke, as many more people survived to suffer the diseases of old age. People are now prone to longer periods of disability, senility, and frailty in the final months or years before death.11

### Prejudice Against Older People in the Third and Fourth Ages of Life

The nature and extent of social prejudice against older people from 1880 to 1980 is a complex question. Graeme Davison's pioneering 1995 essay, 'The Origins of Australian Ageism', began by asking whether such a youthful nation might have 'stigmatised its own old people'. A case could be made for bias against older people in an immigrant community like Australia that was focused on youth. Disrespect for older people might be considered likely in the later nineteenth century, with the ageing of the gold rush generation, especially in Victoria and South Australia. The proportion of Australians over sixty-five was only 2.4 per cent of the population in 1881, compared with 9.8 per cent in 1981.12 Yet older people seemed more of a social problem in the late nineteenth century because their numbers were increasing more quickly and there was little government support for the aged. However, Graeme Davison has rightly emphasised that far more research is needed on the elderly, since the individual historical experiences were likely to be complex and variable, rather than a simple story of continuing prejudice.13

British attitudes and policies relating to old age were highly influential in Australia in the century before 1980. In 1860 nearly 55 per cent of the Australian population was born in the British Isles, and by 1938 the population was still 90 per cent Anglo-Celtic.14 Pat Thane's classic book, _Old Age in English History_ , and her related publications, are invaluable for our comparative understanding of the history of older people. Writing an essay for an Australian audience in 1995, Thane observed that historians in Britain, France and the United States have tended to produce grand narratives which depicted declining status and respect for old people in all periods of history. In contrast, Thane emphasised the need to question the sweeping narratives of decline, which identified the dominant causes such as modernisation. It was more likely that attitudes to older people and representations of them may have varied over time, in both negative and positive ways, with contradictions and ambivalence as continuing features:

[Attitudes] may [also] have varied and conflicted in any one time. In part this is because 'old people' are not and never have been a single simple category. They are divided by gender, by class and power position, by race—the history of old age of white Australians is likely to be different from that of Aboriginal peoples or of the variety of Asian peoples.15

Peter Laslett cautioned that extreme old age had been identified with disease since the late nineteenth century. Indeed 'old age' itself was once described as a disease, and even cited by some Australian asylum records in the 1890s as the most common cause of death. Thus age-related illnesses tended to be viewed as irreversible and as justifying derogatory stereotypes. Writing in his early seventies in 1991, Laslett was especially concerned about the impact of prejudice on those over eighty or, as he termed them, 'the fourth age': 'even the faint possibility of a prolonged Fourth Age is intimidating, of having to continue in a condition of half-life: _sans_ teeth, _sans_ eyes, _sans_ everything.' Since old age can cover thirty years or more, those over sixty in the Third Age had always been very different from those over eighty in the Fourth Age of life, though starting points for each group had varied considerably over the centuries.16

Those over eighty were more likely to fear senile dementia, blindness, loss of mobility and death, as well as being the subject of prejudice. Thus, the Third and Fourth Ages were two different generations for Laslett, with quite diverse economic, social and political experiences. As the size of the Fourth Age increased in the future, so too did society's fears about its ability to support ever-increasing numbers of very frail and dependent old people. Laslett emphasised the danger that old people, as a whole, might be mis-classified in society's view, and treated as if they all belonged to the Fourth Age of the frail, dependent and soon-to-die. Indeed there was a tendency for younger people to see the final stage of decrepitude as the permanent condition of all the elderly. Laslett argued that institutions and policies designed to meet the problems of the frail Fourth Age over eighty did not address the very different needs of Third Age retired people, seeking personal achievement and fulfilment.17

While I have noted the dearth of publications on the history of old age in Australia from 1880 to 1980, there are some notable contributions. Graeme Davison has published valuable pioneering essays in several relevant areas, including the origins of ageism, social surveys and the Brotherhood of St Laurence. There are excellent contributions by Stephen Garton, Jill Roe, Janet McCalman and Anne O'Brien on aged poverty and pensions, as well as from welfare historians Brian Dickey, Richard Kennedy and Ronald Mendelsohn. In 1995, Katie Holmes wrote _Spaces in her Day_ , which included a thoughtful and sensitive chapter on the ageing experiences of individual middle class women, drawn from unpublished diaries in the State Library of New South Wales.18

But we need many more books and articles on the history of old age in Australia, written by experts in particular fields, especially for Indigenous people and migrants from Europe and Asia. We also need more detailed work on individual states. All states have received some attention in my book, but some deserve more, especially South and Western Australia. There is more to be written about many of these themes, including the history of particular nursing homes, aged care more generally, geriatric medicine, old people's welfare centres, and retirement, to name but a few significant topics.

The increasing importance of ageing and old age in Australia is assured. The continuing challenge for historians is to expand our understanding of its complex social history. Effective social policy on ageing today and in the future is dependent on a deep knowledge of its history since the 1880s.

### Notes

1 Caldwell, pp. 23–4, table, p. 40; Rowland, _Ageing in Australia_ , pp. 16–7.

2 _Argus_ , 27 June 1945 ('Forgotten People of the City').

3 Gibson, Diane, 'Getting Better Will Take Some Time', pp. 173–86; Lefroy, 'Geriatric Medicine'.

4 Ryan, Edna, Papers, 25 Jan. 1989, NLA box 15, MS 9140.

5 See chapters 7–8 of this book.

6 Laslett, pp. vii, ix.

7 Rowland, _Ageing in Australia_ , pp. 1–8.

8 Caldwell, p. 24; McDonald, Ruzicka and Pyne, pp. 42–3.

9 ibid.

10 McKeown, passim; Porter, pp. 458–60; Anderson, pp. 362, 381–2.

11 ibid.

12 Caldwell, pp. 23–4.

13 Davison, '"Our Youth is Spent and Our Backs are Bent"', p. 43.

14 Price, pp. 2–22.

15 Thane, _Old Age in English History_ , passim; Thane, 'The Cultural History of Old Age', p. 39.

16 Laslett, p. 13.

17 ibid., p. 3.

18 See my Select Bibliography for these authors.
**Part One
'The Forgotten People',
1880–1945**

## 1

## Poverty and Prejudice, 1880–1908: Asylums or Pensions for the Elderly?

Historians have already made a major contribution to our understanding of the debates on aged pensions from 1900–08. But this milestone in the history of older people can only be fully understood by a careful analysis of the pressures for change in the twenty years from 1880. These included the growing sense of crisis over the ever-expanding destitute asylums for the aged poor—a crisis which reached its climax with the severe economic depression of the 1890s. Not only were the asylums overflowing, but even larger numbers of respectable poor were forced onto the streets to beg or seek rations.

There was a bias in young colonies against 'undeserving' paupers who had once been convicts, especially if they were elderly, frail and destitute. Thus many poor old people ended their days in bleak, overcrowded asylums under a regime which prioritised strict budgets and monotonous regulation. The nature and extent of such prejudice varied greatly between the colonies. For example, there were conflicting views in the 1890s about how to cope with this impending disaster. Victoria was influenced by the reactionary philosophies of the Charity Organisation Society, as we shall see later, fearing the growing pauperisation of the aged as a charge upon the community. By contrast New South Wales was motivated by the more egalitarian policies of the new Labor party and repelled by revelations about appalling asylum conditions.

In the later nineteenth century many sick and incurable older people in colonial Australia spent their last years in so-called 'benevolent' asylums, where conditions varied from inhumane in Queensland and Tasmania, to more tolerable in South Australia and Victoria. The removal of the elderly poor from the home to the asylum was a fundamental social change, reflecting a growing tolerance for large institutions for treating the elderly, destitute and insane. The trend to the institutionalisation of the elderly poor was well under way in colonial Australia, as in Britain, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Colonial governments usually played a greater role than philanthropic bodies in funding the relatively large numbers of destitute older people. Convicts and early migrants left their families behind in Britain, and were obliged to confront illness, destitution and death without the crucial support of family networks or traditional communities, until new family formation took place over generations. Anne O'Brien's analysis of three hundred inmates of the New South Wales benevolent asylums between 1880 and 1896 shows that 92 per cent were immigrants and 64 per cent had no living relatives.1

The demographic and economic changes in later nineteenth-century colonial Australia left an ageing immigrant workforce without property or skills. Old age and destitution were often linked as major contributory factors in their deaths. The loss of mature strength with advancing years, reinforced by ill-health, could cause the premature end of full-time paid employment for labouring men. Certain occupations such as metal-mining were especially debilitating. Many tried to remain independent for as long as possible, but the critical years of vulnerability came early, often around the age of fifty, for lonely men who had never married or had abandoned their families. Most were keen to stay outside destitute asylums where possible, but it was hard to create a new independent existence in a colonial city, with limited social support. Alcohol was also a major problem, when the masculine pub culture was often the centre of male social life and alcohol consumption was high.

As the youthful population of convicts, immigrants and gold seekers aged, the demographic age-structure shifted dramatically. After the gold rushes the over-sixties population of Victoria rose from 1.5 per cent in 1861 to 8 per cent by 1901. The proportion of older people was especially high because of the large exodus of young people during the depression of the 1890s. The increase was more gradual but still significant in NSW, where those over sixty rose from 3 per cent in 1861 to 5.6 per cent in 1901. The proportion of the population over sixty years in 1901 in other colonies was closer to that of NSW, with just over 3 per cent in South Australia and Tasmania, though Queensland and Western Australia were still growing at 4.8 per cent and 3.3 per cent respectively.2

The rising numbers of elderly male immigrants created a marked gender imbalance, which was reflected in the high masculinity ratios in destitute asylums. In Victoria and NSW during the 1870s and 1880s there were usually well over twice as many men as women in the asylums, higher than the sex imbalance in the total populations.3 Other forces affected the gender imbalance in asylums, including the effort to preserve family units by assisting widows and deserted wives through outdoor relief in their own homes. Moreover women were more likely to develop supportive networks of friends and neighbours to provide assistance in times of need. Families often found it easier to cope with dependent old women, whose hatred of institutions probably exceeded that of men.

### Aged People in 'Benevolent' Asylums in Colonial Victoria and South Australia

Victoria created a system of destitute asylums that probably deserved the title of 'benevolent' more than most, despite overcrowding, poor diet and regimentation. But Victoria was also the most powerfully influenced by the English Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, with its stress on the stigma of pauperism and its stark distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor; applicants had to prove destitution by willingness to enter workhouses which were made deliberately unattractive. The reformed poor law system in England did have some benefits from the 1870s, with its compulsory poor rates, professional administrators and centralised organisation. But the comfortable classes in Victoria fiercely opposed state intervention to compel taxation for social support, which was thought to encourage rather than deter pauperism. They supported private philanthropy and its network of charities as the appropriate moral alternative. Nonetheless philanthropy proved inadequate in most young colonies, requiring increasing government grants. In Victoria in practice the government had to provide around 70 per cent of the asylums' operating costs by the 1890s.4

The Melbourne Benevolent Asylum for the aged, infirm and destitute was established in Melbourne in 1850, chiefly for single, low-paid male labourers. The primary occupation of women in the Asylum was overwhelmingly domestic service, though women were always in a minority from the 1870s. The Melbourne Benevolent Asylum's population became increasingly old and infirm, the average age at death for men rising from fifty-seven years in 1870–72 to seventy-five in 1912. The numbers of inmates in the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum increased from 625 in 1880 to a high point of over 680 during the depression of the 1890s. The vast majority of inmates were English and Irish, with smaller numbers of Scots and Welsh. An increasing proportion needed medical care because they were very old and worn down by disease: in 1880 half the 625 were classified as incurable and over a hundred as blind.5 In 1896 the Melbourne _Herald_ described the annual muster of Melbourne Asylum inmates: 'hundreds of poor old creatures hobbled and tottered past... Some were lame, many blind, others partially paralysed... It was a sad spectacle.'6

Applicants to the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum had to be recommended by a subscriber, and usually came from the labouring classes. Their claims were investigated, as to character, means and family support: most were admitted if there were vacancies, despite common failures to prove worthiness. They usually remained in the Asylum because extreme age, infirmity or destitution left them no other option. 'Old age' was cited as the most common reason for admission, as well as heart disease, blindness, general debility, rheumatism, and paralysis.7

From the mid-1870s the Asylum's general registers contained more information about family circumstances, since there was a strong moral expectation in Victoria that families should support elderly indigent relatives. But few inmates had families in Victoria with resources and many had no family in colonial Australia at all. The registers had to cite reasons for the failure of families to do their duty. Mary Kelly, a widow and former domestic servant aged sixty-six, was admitted in 1882 suffering 'general decay' and died only eight days later, but her only son and two nephews were unwilling to support her. William Talbot was a bootmaker, aged seventy on admission, who died after five years in the Asylum: the register noted that his four sons were not in the colony and they 'left their father helpless'.8 Married couples were separated within the Asylum in segregated dormitories and dining rooms. Jane James, a domestic servant aged seventy, entered the Asylum in 1885 with partial paralysis and died three years later. Her husband John became an inmate six months before her death. Their sons' locations were unknown and their married daughters were unable to support them.9

In many cases the bare recorded facts in the bleak Asylum registers are intensely sad. Emma Woodhead, another widowed domestic servant, endured ten years inside while totally blind. Her daughter-in-law was prepared to bury her in 1888, but not to accommodate her in life. Julia Howard, a domestic servant aged eighty-five, with no living children, survived until she was ninety-two, despite infirmities. Her husband offered no support because he was living in Richmond with another woman. Many inmates stand out in the records just because they somehow endured life in the Asylum to extreme old age. Martha Ball and Sarah Quick were former English domestic servants who died in the Asylum in the 1890s at ninety-nine and one hundred years respectively. Neither had relatives or friends to assist and Sarah was brought in by police as destitute at ninety-two years of age. These wretched cases raise questions about where these frail old people lived and how they survived before entering the asylum at such advanced ages.10

The responses of the eight Victorian benevolent asylums to enquiries from the Royal Commission on Old-age Pensions in 1898 were illuminating. In answer to the question, 'Are the inmates of the class of deserving poor?', the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum replied that only about one-quarter of their 685 inmates were deserving. The majority of their inmates allegedly became 'burdens on charity' as a consequence of 'drink, improvidence, indolence'; there was no mention of old age, disease, poverty, blindness, mental disability or unemployment. Though the average age of inmates in all eight Victorian asylums was over seventy years, only the Geelong Asylum mentioned old age as a cause of destitution.11

The Destitute Asylum in Adelaide was perhaps the most humane in colonial Australia, especially as it was the only one so far to conceive its role as primarily medical. From 1852 the government-funded Destitute Board provided indoor care for the infirm aged at a large central asylum in Adelaide, the only one in the colony. In South Australia the government also played an unusually large role in provision of outdoor relief in food and other necessities through the Destitute Board for the infirm aged living outside Adelaide. By the 1880s men in the asylum outnumbered women by three to one, following the impact of the gold rushes and heavy male immigration. The average age of the asylum inmates rose as the population aged and the asylum increasingly focused on an ageing generation of single male immigrants drawn from tough, unskilled jobs such as labourers and station hands. Three-quarters of the 223 admissions in 1887–88 were older migrants with no family in Australia—or none willing to support them.12

The managers of the Adelaide Destitute Asylum tried to be humane and to make the best use of extremely limited resources. Adelaide was unusual from the start in seeing the asylum's role as primarily a hospital for the 'aged, decrepit or diseased', rather than a workhouse for the destitute. Many inmates had been moved to the asylum from the hospitals as a consequence of incurable chronic disease and poverty and 75 per cent were expected to die in the asylum.13 In 1885 the average age was seventy for men and sixty-four for women, and the average inmate was far more debilitated than in the asylums of Victoria and NSW. The average numbers of inmates under medical treatment rose steadily from 95 in 1889 to 355 in 1896, with great emphasis placed on the need for good, attentive nursing for the utterly helpless.14

An article in the _Adelaide Advertiser_ in May 1898 commended the humanity and efficiency of the asylum officials: the asylum was well managed, but the system required a 'complete revolution'. In particular the author condemned the 'barbarous' separation of poor, old married couples who had spent their lives together, as 'a standing blot on our civilisation'. He also criticised the apparently aimless and joyless lives of so many inmates, 'sitting in rows on benches to all appearances without any occupation'.15

### Inhumane Asylums in Tasmania, Queensland and NSW

The worst asylums were those in colonial Tasmania and Queensland, where treatment of the old and the sick could be inhumane and entirely inappropriate. Discrimination against debilitated and allegedly useless old people was sometimes justified by the diffuse ideas of 'social Darwinism', which adapted Darwin's theory of the evolution of the species to mean the survival of the fittest human beings. Old people suffering from dementia, paralysis, cancer and incurable diseases were too often viewed as useless and could be subjected to humiliation and torment in asylums supposed to care for them.16

Joan C. Brown's study of asylums in colonial Tasmania reveals a punitive pattern of treatment which emphasised authoritarian control and strict economy. Since Tasmania had few charities the colonial government played a direct role in the treatment of the elderly destitute. The large number of former convicts in Tasmania, combined with a weak economy and the exodus of younger people to the mainland, produced dreadful conditions in the three destitute 'depots'. Frequent criticism of the three asylums inspired inquiries that condemned the dilapidated accommodation and lack of 'nursing comforts', though few staff abuses. The typical depot inmate was an elderly ex-convict, regarded by the community as one of the undeserving poor, even when old and frail. The chief faults were the separation of man and wife, the soul-destroying monotony and the 'lack of provision for the retention of normal human dignity' as the inmates waited for death. The bleak reputation of the destitute depots prompted the respectable poor to avoid them by working until they collapsed.17

The Queensland asylum was the worst of all, since authorities classified the incurably ill and the elderly infirm as morally tainted paupers. The aged, incapacitated and incurable were consigned to punitive exile at Dunwich Asylum on remote Stradbroke Island, a former convict outstation. In 1884 the Dunwich Asylum was depicted by a parliamentary inquiry as 'a dumping ground' for elderly incurable hospital cases, with patients suffering from tuberculosis, cancer, paralysis, senility, or blindness. The inmates who were relatively less weak were expected to look after the sick and dying, as they were in Tasmania and NSW. In 1884 the Dunwich Asylum held 329 males and 61 females. One unfortunate inmate, Thomas Stanley, aged seventy-three, courageously protested that the hospital wards were places where old men were left to die, with no medical assistance or nursing care to reduce physical pain or emotional distress. But little was done to reform Dunwich, due to its relative efficiency in terms of economy and effective control. Even in 1918 it was still criticised for its unskilled treatment of the aged and infirm.18

New South Wales's record on treatment of elderly asylum inmates in the 1880s was less humane than that in Victoria and South Australia, but not as brutal as Queensland and Tasmania. Four government asylums for destitute, frail old men were established between 1862 and 1894. Aged and infirm women were transferred from Hyde Park Barracks to the Newington Asylum for Women in 1884. These asylums were huge, overcrowded institutions, with the three largest accommodating more than 800 inmates each. The more able-bodied inmates were expected to do all the work, even the nursing, as there were no paid nurses until after 1887. Usually the hospitals provided emergency and acute treatment facilities for respectable patients, while the asylums acted as the cheaper, chronic hospitals for the pauper incurables and elderly infirm.

Given the extreme economies essential to maintain sick and incurable old people at £11 a year per head, a negligent or harsh doctor or matron could make the difference between a barely tolerable situation and brutality. In 1887 the condition of the asylums at Parramatta and Newington was so shocking that members of a governmental Board of Inquiry acknowledged that 'neglect, oppression and cruelty have been suffered by the patients'. It was highly unusual for an Inquiry Board to take a stand so strongly opposed to the senior staff of the asylums, in favour of the numerous brave inmates who had made allegations to the Governor, the Board and the press. Such charges were usually dismissed for lack of evidence, as the product of inmates' minds confused by disease, dementia, and alcohol.19

The Inquiry Board of 1886–87 strongly condemned Dr Charles Rowling, the medical superintendent of all three asylums, for negligence and brutality: his attendance on the sick and elderly poor was 'irregular, careless, perfunctory, and devoid of reasonable kindness'. The Board was convinced of equal dereliction of duty by the matrons of two of the three asylums, and criticised the asylum system for using ill-educated inmates as nurses. At Newington Asylum for Women 'neglect and cruelty were suffered by sick inmates at the hands of their ward attendants', compounded by dreadful conditions and the negligence of doctor and matron. One ward attendant even beat bedridden patients.20

The chief charges against the government asylum at Macquarie Street, Parramatta, with 291 inmates, were cruelty and 'gross brutalities' by the inmate wardsmen, and extreme neglect by the matron. Most victims who were beaten and tormented by brutal wardsmen were identified as 'imbeciles', with senile dementia, paralysis, or limited mental capacities. James Rooney, blind and partially paralysed, had the courage to give damning evidence against the wardsmen responsible for repeated barbarities.21 The Inquiry Board concluded that immediate steps must be taken to end a cruel system, which 'would be degrading to the most inhuman race of savages':

Your Board have hitherto refrained from commenting upon the horrors and miseries and the amount of human suffering endured for years in these Institutions; although the groans and cries of distress from the helpless creatures never appear to have reached official ears... No pen is capable of exaggerating the horrible story of wretchedness and misery in a single detail. The evidence so simply yet pathetically given by those blind paralyzed witnesses, corroborated, as it is, over and over again by others, cries for alteration and amendment, and the cry should not be allowed to pass unheeded.22

### The Old Age Pensions Debate in the 1890s: Progressive NSW

Though the 1887 Inquiry into the NSW asylums was well publicised, its call for radical reform was ignored by colonial governments for a decade, as politicians saw little advantage in championing the cause of disenfranchised elderly paupers. However, within ten years the climate of opinion in NSW changed, for several reasons. There was a slow and uneven shift in perceptions of the role of the state in social policy, partly encouraged by growing collectivist sentiment in Britain, and Bismarck's social insurance scheme in Germany. Attitudes were becoming more egalitarian with the increasing authority of a new Labor party in politics in the 1890s. Less emphasis was placed on the long-held view that state provision of social welfare undermined self-reliance. Indeed there was a slow breakdown in NSW of the existing consensus in favour of laissez-faire and voluntary philanthropy as primary support for the elderly poor. Moreover a number of compassionate individuals in positions of influence in the 1890s had been repelled by the appalling revelations about the asylums in 1887 and actively sought change.

Another powerful force for reform in NSW was the catastrophic impact of the 1890s economic depression on the working classes and the poor, followed by a prolonged drought. Economic activity and foreign credit contracted powerfully from 1891, heralding a grim period of extensive unemployment and rapidly falling wool prices. Confidence slumped when British depositors withdrew their funds from colonial banks. Between April and May 1893 many banks closed or suspended business, creating economic and political chaos.23 The depression led to a reassessment of the treatment of very poor elderly people, both inside the asylums and in the community. As unemployment soared, the number of people reduced to abject poverty increased dramatically. The situation was so dire that fewer critics blamed the increasing numbers of poverty-stricken people for creating their own hardships through laziness or immorality.24

The combination of revulsion at the state of the destitute asylums and horror at the impact of the depression on older people shocked compassionate individuals into action. Their increasing abhorrence of the asylums outweighed their concern that pensions might increase pauperism. Canon Francis Bertie Boyce played a major role in educating public opinion in NSW about the need for old age pensions and helped to ensure this cause was adopted by parliament. Canon Boyce was Anglican Archdeacon in the working class suburb of Redfern, and a campaign leader for temperance, slum clearance and female suffrage. He was converted to the need for pensions, as a right, by the abject poverty of the elderly people in his working-class parishes: 'too old to work, they were reduced to a wretched condition by insufficient and improper food, lack of adequate clothing and poor lodgings.' Many lived by begging, choosing to starve to death rather than enter the detested asylums.25 Canon Boyce campaigned vigorously to educate and arouse the people of NSW on the issue, at public meetings and in letters to the press. He played a leading role in creating an Old Age Pensions League in February 1896 to sway public opinion and parliament, with Sir Arthur Renwick as president. Renwick was a physician, evangelical philanthropist and politician, well acquainted with 'intolerable conditions' in the asylums since he was president of the Sydney Benevolent Asylum.26

Canon Boyce's campaign achieved its desired result in the creation of a Select Committee of the NSW Legislative Assembly in 1896 to inquire into old age pensions, which had recently been added to the Labor Party platform. Much has been written about the inquiries into pensions between 1900 and 1908, but little about those of the 1890s, which are far more illuminating about the impact of poverty on the elderly poor and the diverse views on the reforms required. The NSW Select Committee of Inquiry of 1896 revealed a remarkably high degree of political consensus on the urgent need for old age pensions at this early stage. Its progressive and compassionate response was dramatically different from subsequent inquiries in 1898 in South Australia and Victoria. Indeed, the 1896 NSW Inquiry provided an indispensable foundation for its successor in 1900, and for the ultimate Commonwealth legislation in 1908.

This NSW Select Committee of 1896 was fortunate in its bold and far-sighted leadership by enlightened and compassionate witnesses, including its chairman Edward O'Sullivan, president of the Trades and Labour Council. The Maxted brothers also played a significant and well-informed role in the 1896 NSW Inquiry. Sydney Maxted was Director of Charitable Institutions in NSW, while Edward, a journalist, was manager of the Benevolent Society of New South Wales from 1884. Both had been deeply shocked by the damning Royal Commission Report into the asylums in 1887 and campaigned for systematic reform. They argued that the state should take direct responsibility for the elderly poor if the family could not assist. Edward Maxted published a series of humane newspaper articles and reports to the Benevolent Society on the degradation of the elderly poor.27

Sydney Maxted's evidence to the 1896 NSW Select Committee revealed the brothers' gradual recognition of the need for state-supported pensions—it was highly influential, given his own authority and his intimate knowledge of the welfare system. He condemned the situation in the huge state-run asylums of the 1880s as so dreadful that 'partial starvation had really driven a number of feeble inmates insane'. When Sydney Maxted took over the asylums in 1888 he reduced the death rates by 10 per cent by substantially improving the diet and increasing the rates of outdoor relief in the community. By 1896 he was more than ever convinced that the existing asylum system seriously demoralised many old people who were ashamed when obliged to apply for entry and hated life inside. His evidence to the committee undoubtedly had a powerful impact on its humane outcome.28

Much of the testimony to the 1896 NSW Select Committee was concerned with the deficiencies of the asylums, the prospects of reform, and the proportion of inmates who might usefully be released into the community. Sir Arthur Renwick, president of the Pensions League and also of the Sydney Benevolent Asylum, was another influential witness, who concluded that 'a state of things exists which, in the name of common humanity, requires immediate remedy'. Buildings were utterly unsuitable, and classification was impossible because of overcrowding and lack of appropriate staff. The 'sick and the sound' were mixed indiscriminately, though a majority were chronically sick and would be better cared for in hospitals or in the community. Out of approximately 3500 inmates in NSW asylums in 1896, about 1500 required medical treatment, 1000 were simply old and destitute, and 500 were 'temporary casuals'. However, Renwick believed that the asylum system would continue to be necessary for the remaining 500 'dissipated old chronics', unfit to mix in civil society, though they were only a tiny proportion of the total.29

The 1896 Select Committee explored the value and viability of a scheme for 'boarding out' a proportion of asylum inmates to relatives, friends, or other householders, by offering them their small pensions to pay for boarding. However, witnesses were generally agreed about the very low proportion of asylum inmates suitable for boarding out. Sydney Maxted thought that only about 550 of the total 3500 inmates could be boarded out, as the vast majority were unable to care for themselves due to drink, senility and other disabilities. Thus the idea of 'boarding out' was abandoned as ineffective in NSW, though it continued to be the primary policy approach in South Australia.30

There was general agreement among the witnesses that there were more distressed and impoverished old people in the community in the 1890s, rather than in the asylums. Numerous destitute old couples refused to be separated in asylums. Another powerful witness, Sydney City missionary James Maxwell Main, had talked with large numbers of very poor people in the community, who were unable to support themselves because of illness or unemployment. Main, like several other witnesses, saw old age itself as the most common cause of poverty: destitution outside asylums was more often due to inability to work in old age than to dissolute behaviour or laziness. Formerly respectable older people eked out a minimal living by 'quiet begging' and the occasional help of acquaintances. The sense of dread and shame kept them out of asylums until starvation made them desperate. However, Main concluded that they might take advantage of a small pension, if available, as a matter of right and not pauperism.31

Canon Boyce agreed with James Main that many more old people outside the asylums were just as destitute and deserving as those inside. Boyce outlined twelve typical cases of extreme poverty he had dealt with in the previous month, which might be relieved by a small old-age pension. One couple, both aged eighty, living in Petersham, were too weak to work and hated the prospect of being separated in asylums. Several other couples were also frail and destitute; one couple in their seventies had been begging for four years, though they were a respectable pair who lost their money through a building society failure in the depression. Most of Boyce's twelve cases were 'very respectable', but had no means of support because they were unable to work: all could be relieved by a small pension of seven shillings a week.32

The Maxted brothers also observed that in the depression, outdoor relief such as food and clothing was being granted to a class of old people who had never dreamed of applying before—respectable men and women who were destitute because they could not find work to support themselves. The Sydney Benevolent Asylum was assisting 850 approved families of this respectable class of elderly poor with weekly relief. Numerous older people were ashamed to take 'outdoor' relief initially, but their feelings became blunted as the system demoralised them. It was highly significant that 6800 unemployed destitute older people were receiving such outdoor relief in 1896—far more than the 3500 inside the asylums.33 The 1898 Royal Commission on Public Charities expressed concern that the spectacle of a crowd of 1200 appearing every Wednesday for relief would be 'injurious in its pauperizing effects'.34

Most of the 1896 Select Committee Inquiry witnesses agreed that the substantial proportion of destitute old people outside the asylums would benefit from a small pension. But they differed as to the type of pension scheme that might be appropriate and affordable in colonial NSW. Many witnesses were familiar with the British pension debates, which tended to favour contributory insurance schemes on the German model, but most believed the young Australian colonies could not afford them. Sir Arthur Renwick argued that contributory state insurance was impossible in Australia because the population was still small and scattered, and lacked an 'organized officialdom' to exercise control. Sydney Maxted likewise opposed a contributory scheme because those most in need could not afford it, since it was too expensive and unworkable. Almost no provision had so far been made for old age in the colonies, except for small private savings in a minority of cases. Even friendly societies provided little other than burial benefits.35

The concept of a free universal pension for all over sixty, paid by the state, was also deemed inconceivable and 'beyond the compass of the community'. Renwick concluded that they could afford only a limited scheme to 'touch a certain class'. However, Robert Garran objected that a selective scheme confined to the most needy inevitably carried the stigma of pauperism and outdoor relief. He highlighted the crucial dilemma that continued to confound debate into the next decade and beyond—whether the pension was a right or a charity. Several witnesses testified to the need for pensions to be granted as a right, a state obligation to reward older citizens for past services. Yet they also recognised that the poor Australian colonies could not yet afford universal pensions, so expediency demanded the compromise of a means test.36 It was a substantial achievement to carry a pensions bill as a right while maintaining a means test that limited that right, but it avoided debate as to who was deserving.

Edward O'Sullivan, president of the Trades and Labor Council, was a strong and influential chair of the nineteen meetings of the 1896 NSW Select Committee. He wrote the draft report which reflected his own bold and positive approach to the role of the state in the economy and to the rights of older citizens, as did the final report which was remarkable for its consensus, compassion and humanity. It recommended old age pensions for those over sixty with an income of less than £50 per year, provided they had lived in NSW for at least fifteen years. Such pensions should be regarded as 'a free gift from the state' in recognition of services rendered, with no distinction between the deserving and the less deserving.37 These vital words survived, intact, in the crucial NSW _Old Age Pensions Act 1900_ , and the Commonwealth _Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act 1908_. The 1896 report was indeed more generous than the NSW Old Age Pensions legislation of 1900, which imposed conditions as to worthiness. As Brian Dickey observed, the 1896 NSW Select Committee Report was 'the working basis of a universalist approach to the problem of caring for the aged poor which asserted a clear claim on their behalf to some degree of dignity and independence as a right'. But complex colonial politics intervened to prevent any immediate action on a remarkably progressive report.38

### Royal Commissions on Old Age Pensions in Victoria and South Australia, 1898

By contrast with the 1896 NSW Select Committee Report, the Victorian Royal Commission Report on Old Age Pensions two years later was shocking and mean-spirited, marred by 'sanctimonious nonconformity and censorious morality' as John Murphy notes.39 To explain the gulf between the NSW and Victorian Inquiries of 1896 and 1898 we must take into account the influence of successive Liberal regimes, reinforced by the Charity Organisation Society (COS) in Victoria. The COS was founded in England and had its greatest Australian impact in Melbourne, where it was established in 1887 by Edward Morris, Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Melbourne. He won the support of businessmen and professionals for the harsh COS method of dealing with poverty. His aim was to limit aid to the 'undeserving' poor by applying the principles of 'less eligibility' of the English Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, to ensure outdoor relief did not undermine self-reliance. As Kennedy notes, 'this band of reactionaries galvanized the charity scene, trying to apply the "principles of 1834" with extreme strictness in a colonial milieu'. Though their philosophy made no allowance for mass unemployment, they were still determined to separate the deserving from the undeserving.40

The Victorian Royal Commission Report on Old Age Pensions of 1898 rigidly followed its liberal philosophy and the COS agenda. It recommended that the aged poor be divided into two classes: class A, the deserving aged, were to receive a small pension, while class B, who were undeserving, must enter the state asylums without pensions. The witnesses were almost unanimous that 'the pauperizing and degrading element should as far as possible be eliminated, and the self-respect of the [pension] recipient preserved'. The ideal was to provide 'fair' assistance without weakening individual initiative, self-respect or 'manly independence'. Thus the less deserving, who were deemed intemperate, indolent and improvident, should be consigned to the benevolent asylums without pensions. This scheme was alarmingly similar to the harsh workhouse test of the English Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834,41 reflecting the powerful prejudices of some Liberals and the Charity Organisation Society in Victoria.

This Royal Commission recommendation raised the thorny problem of how to discriminate between these two supposedly distinct categories of elderly people. The Report explained that the pension fund would be managed by unpaid district committees, who would personally interview each applicant to assess each case. If the pension was used 'unworthily' the committees could recommend that the recipient be transferred to class B and interred involuntarily in a benevolent institution. There was little advice from witnesses as to how this ruthless process might work in practice—still less any criticism of its potential for injustice.42 Aged pensions of ten shillings a week were to be paid from the general revenue to the deserving poor, who had 'reared families in a respectable manner', whose conduct had been good, and who showed evidence of prudence in managing their affairs.43

In colonial Victoria, the trigger for the Royal Commission was not the dreadful state of the asylums, since Victoria's asylum record was considerably better than that in NSW. The question of pensions was raised in Victoria in response to the 1890s depression. The final Report reluctantly recognised that the national conscience had been 'pricked' by the depression, unemployment and low wages, obliging the state to ensure that 'the worn-out wealth-creating human machines' received subsistence in asylums. The terminology spoke eloquently of prejudice. Less than 20 per cent of current inmates of asylums were regarded as deserving a pension. Several witnesses, including Augustus Bond, Acting Inspector of Charities, were totally opposed to old age pensions, arguing that the population was too small to afford them, while current poverty was abnormal, due to the depression. Edward Williams MLA believed 'the giving of a State pension would be a very dangerous proceeding', which would increase pauperism and reduce self-respect.44

The South Australian Aged Poor Royal Commission of 1898 was focused on a very limited scheme for boarding out selected inmates of asylums, a smaller version of the proposal earlier rejected in NSW. Genuine compassion for the elderly poor in South Australia was limited by its inability, as a poor colony with a small population, to pay for pensions and by the disunity between its seven commissioners: four out of seven dissented, including the chairman. However, South Australia was far closer to NSW than Victoria in its view of the causes and extent of poverty among the elderly. It concluded that 'old age itself, under stress of modern competition, has become one of the chief immediate causes of poverty'. Indeed poverty was largely the fate of older people in South Australia, due to unemployment and bodily infirmity: 'the aged poor are less able to endure privation and become increasingly helpless with advancing years.' A more humane and effective system of relief was urgently needed, but the initiative must come from the larger more populated colonies.45 The existing outdoor relief system continued to operate until 1908.

### Legislation for Old Age Pensions, 1900–1908

The debates between 1900 and 1908 on aged pensions and subsequent Commonwealth legislation have been thoroughly examined by historians and other scholars, including Brian Dickey, Jill Roe, John Murphy, Stephen Garton and T.H. Kewley. Early historians tended to accept Premier William Lyne's statement that the NSW legislation of 1900 closely followed New Zealand's _Old Age Pensions Act_ of 1898. That is justified if we only look at the final terms of the legislation, but it overlooks the highly significant influence of NSW's own earlier inquiry of 1896. As we have seen, the 1896 Select Committee Report was based on exceptional and well-informed leadership, administrative expertise, and a generosity of approach which became the starting points for the 1900 discussion. Indeed Edward O'Sullivan himself, the chairman of the 1896 Select Committee, remained a member of the 1900 parliament, which repeated his fundamental principle that pensions must be a right and not a charity. William Pember Reeves, a New Zealand radical, published an influential survey of state experiments in 1902, including age pensions in Australia and New Zealand. He admired the 'striking, novel and expensive social reform' adopted in NSW in 1900 with little hesitation, amidst 'a harmonious chorus of blessings'.46 Such an achievement in 1900 was only possible because of the remarkable foundation laid by O'Sullivan, Boyce, Renwick, the Maxted brothers, and other pioneers in the later 1890s.

The generosity of approach in the NSW _Old Aged Pensions Act_ of 1900 was a fortunate inheritance from the 1896 inquiry and went to the core of the legislation. The 1900 Act in NSW was particularly significant as it became the basis for the Commonwealth legislation in 1908, while both drew also on the final terms of the 1898 New Zealand legislation. The inquiries of the 1890s had all agreed that a contributory scheme was out of the question, so this was a non-contributory plan, restricted to both women and men over sixty-five. As Jill Roe notes, the inclusion of women on equal terms with men was highly progressive and had been promoted by the Reverend Charles Strong in the 1898 Victorian Report. The NSW pension was set at a maximum of £26 per annum for those with property worth less than £390. Expediency again demanded the compromise of a means test. Most criticism of the measure was aimed at the means test, with several Labor members complaining that pensions should be a right not a charity. But most accepted pragmatically that severely limited funds dictated a slow and ungenerous start.47

There were other unfortunate exclusions in the NSW legislation of 1900. Recipients must have lived in NSW for twenty-five years, and Australian Aborigines, aliens and 'Asiatics' were totally excluded. As Jill Roe observed, these restrictions partly reflected concerns about social control, while the racist exclusions were common to much Australian legislation of the period. Also regrettable was the retrograde test of 'unsatisfactory moral character', which demanded that pension recipients must have led a 'sober and respectable life' for the previous five years. This was a sad departure from the more generous NSW vision of 1896 which had excluded any such condition; instead NSW in 1900 moved in the direction signalled by the retrograde Victorian Royal Commission of 1898, which discriminated more starkly between the deserving and undeserving aged.48

However, this departure from an otherwise progressive piece of NSW legislation, by the standard of the times, was negligible by comparison with the harsh Victorian legislation of 1900. This was also powerfully influenced by Victoria's own earlier inquiry in 1898. Premier George Turner introduced a rushed bill in 1900 in an apparent effort to pre-empt the NSW legislation.49 This bill awarded pensions of ten shillings per week to people of good character aged sixty-five and over. In 1901 Turner's successor in Victoria reduced the payment to seven shillings and strengthened the means test so that applicants had somehow to prove six months' destitution. Moreover, pensions could be withheld if relatives refused to support applicants. Administrators had substantial discretion in enforcing harsh regulations concerning family support and lack of means. As with the 1898 Royal Commission, Victoria seemed to follow the English Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 with its 'less eligibility' approach and demands for proof of utter destitution and frailty. The inefficiencies and costs of such a retrograde system were horrific, as was the misery inflicted on elderly people. Thousands of applications for pensions were rejected. Even harsher rules were introduced to exclude those over sixty-five who were considered able-bodied from the pension. Consequently, by 1906–07 only 16 per cent of older people received a pension in Victoria, compared with the far more generous 39 per cent from NSW.50

Old people in Victoria from 1900 to 1908 received considerably lower pensions than those in NSW, accompanied by far greater hardship. They were fortunate that when the Commonwealth _Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act_ of 1908 replaced state legislation, the more progressive and generous NSW model prevailed. As Dickey observed: 'It was in Victoria that the least was conceded and with the greatest ill-grace.' The stringent doctrines of the Charity Organisation Society were still highly influential in Victoria, where the needs of those deemed 'deserving' took precedence over the rights of the majority of older people. As Murphy notes, 'new liberal ideas about the state and about social justice were more articulated in Sydney (and Wellington) than in Melbourne'. Moreover the Labor movement was weaker in Victoria, and its cautious political leaders lacked the policy and administrative expertise so marked in the NSW inquiries into pensions.51 The Labor Party in NSW also had the advantage of the balance of power situation.

The Commonwealth legislation of 1908 replaced that of the various states, as Brian Dickey and T.H. Kewley have documented in detail. In South Australia there had been no outcome to the Aged Poor Royal Commission of 1898, leaving the old 'outdoor relief' system still in place. Queensland grudgingly gave a minimal allowance of five shillings a week in 1907, but only because Dunwich Asylum was full. The reluctant federal Deakin government was finally persuaded to take action in 1908, following a Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions in 1906. The NSW model was followed, due to the 'political impossibility' of reducing the benefits available in NSW, rather than enthusiasm for progressive reform. The means test was applied to income over £52 per year and to property worth more than £310. Good character was still required, but this had no impact, as it was not defined. Aboriginal people, 'Asiatics' and aliens continued to be denied aged pensions.52

It is important to note that Commonwealth aged pensions from 1908 did not entirely solve the problem of older people forced by circumstances to become inmates of asylums. For example, NSW governments had partly justified their procrastination on asylum reform by the argument that the _Old Age Pensions Act_ of 1900 would resolve the problems by reducing numbers. But despite a slight decline in numbers in NSW destitute asylums between 1902 and 1903, as some old people attempted life outside, most drifted back. They found they could not manage on a tiny pension of ten shillings per week, less than one-quarter of the minimum wage, and with no additional medical help. Asylum numbers declined only slightly in the decade after 1901, while the proportion of their hospital patients rose, thus increasing costs. It took some years for Commonwealth officials to recognise that while they were now paying out £500,000 per annum in old age pensions, the costs of asylums for the aged were also increasing.53 The next generation of aged people in Australia were confronted by the historical legacies of their immediate predecessors.

The principle of universalism was applied more liberally in the Commonwealth scheme than it had been in Victoria but, as Dickey argues, 'universalism was exacting its penalty in the complexity of the rules required to protect its application'. Moreover those fortunate enough to receive the pension were obliged to eke out a living on a quarter of the basic wage, which was itself being eroded by inflation. As Dickey notes, free enterprise capitalism was scarcely threatened, and 'the social processes causing the poverty of these aged people remained unchallenged and unchanged'. From about 1911 increasing numbers of older people applied for pensions as they learned of the benefits, to the dismay of some conservative politicians. Even then only about one-third of those qualified by age applied for the pension. Sol Encel cited the remarkable contrast between the labour force participation rate for men aged 65–69 in 1911 at a high 72 per cent and those over seventy at 44 per cent, compared with only 8.4 per cent for all men over sixty-five in 1994.54 Some older people, especially perhaps those in Victoria, still found it difficult to accept that the pension was indeed a right, and not charitable relief carrying stigma. Such views were confirmed for many more pensioners when already miniscule pensions were further reduced in the great depression of the 1930s, along with reversion to some of the harsher Victorian penalties.55

Australia earned a reputation as a progressive 'social laboratory' because of its major reforms in relation to the aged pension, extending the suffrage, and basic wage regulation. These achievements raised high hopes for the future that did not eventuate in the next half century. As John Murphy notes, Australia was a 'welfare laggard' in the next fifty years, and even the Labor Party's 'Welfare State' from 1945 was 'relatively modest' and parsimonious. Australia continued to rely chiefly on aged pensions funded from revenue, based on a means test, and rejecting contributory insurance. 'Without contributions the moral position of those needing welfare support is especially precarious', as became clear during economic depression in the interwar years.56

### Notes

1 O'Brien, p. 52.

2 Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions, Australia.

3 _Statistical Registers_.

4 Poynter, passim.

5 Melbourne Benevolent Asylum Records, MS 8366, 626/1–13, SLV; _Statistical Register_ , Victoria, 1891.

6 Kehoe, p. 40 (quotation).

7 Melbourne Benevolent Asylum Records, general register of applicants and inmates, SLV, MS 8366, 626/1.

8 ibid.

9 ibid.

10 ibid.

11 Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions, Victoria, 1898.

12 See Geyer, pp. 10–12, 25; Garton, p. 47ff.

13 Commission into the Destitute Act: 1881, pp. xv, xviii; Geyer, passim.

14 Destitute Poor Department, Adelaide.

15 _Adelaide Advertiser_ , 13 May 1898.

16 Evans, pp. 74–100.

17 Brown, Joan C, pp. 102–5, 122–5, 157–8.

18 Evans, pp. 74–100; Select Committee on the Management of the Benevolent Asylum, Dunwich.

19 Government Asylums Board of Inquiry, Report, Sydney.

20 ibid., pp. 25–8.

21 ibid., p. 37; Minutes of Evidence, pp. 165, 160, 154.

22 ibid., p. 36.

23 Davison, _The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne_ , pp. 14, 215, 126–7; Kingston, _The Oxford History of Australia_ , p. 45.

24 Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions, Australia, p. 14.

25 _Daily Telegraph_ , 11 Aug. 1904 (Canon F B Boyce); Boyce, pp. 99–104.

26 ibid., pp. 99–104.

27 Radi, _ADB_.

28 Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly, NSW.

29 ibid.

30 ibid.

31 ibid.

32 ibid.

33 ibid.

34 Royal Commission on Public Charities, New South Wales.

35 Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly.

36 ibid.

37 ibid.

38 Dickey, pp. 112–3.

39 Murphy, p. 34.

40 Kennedy, pp. 73–8; Dickey, pp. 89–101.

41 Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions, Victoria.

42 ibid.

43 ibid.

44 ibid.

45 Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, South Australia.

46 Reeves, passim.

47 Kewley, pp. 43–5; Roe, 'Old Age, Young Country', pp. 23–42.

48 ibid.

49 Dickey, pp. 115–7; Murphy, pp. 33–47.

50 ibid.

51 ibid., pp. 44–5; Dickey, p. 115.

52 ibid., pp. 118–20; Kewley, pp. 73–7.

53 _Year Books_ , NSW, 1891–1910.

54 Dickey, pp. 119, 123; Encel, pp. 137–56.

55 Dickey, pp. 119–23.

56 Murphy, pp. 33–47.

## 2

## Older Women as Widows, Spinsters and Carers, 1880–1950: From Ada Cambridge to Mary Gilmore

Much of the late nineteenth-century Australian evidence on old age relates to the plight of the poor and the working classes, especially the horrors of the destitute asylums and the prolonged debates about old age pensions. These sources also reveal the varying attitudes of the more comfortable classes towards the needs of the poor and frail, but tell us little about their own experiences in old age. However, rare archival diaries and family correspondence in state libraries are valuable sources for old age from 1880 to 1980. Diaries written by older people often provide a daily narrative of how time was spent and routines developed, of the limitations of ill-health and loneliness, and the advantages of wealth, family and religion. Few such early diaries have survived, and these might be expected to favour a positive perspective on old age. Moreover, diarists sometimes edited their entries on the assumption that families might read them after their deaths.

Gender has been a vital factor in the ageing of the Australian population. Indeed, gender is so important in the experience of ageing that men and women are considered in separate chapters in this book. The outlook for older women in the late nineteenth century was particularly bleak, given the lack of aged pensions and very limited access to insurance and Friendly Society benefits. In 1888 widows outnumbered widowers by a ratio of about 3:2 in New South Wales, and the gap further widened with age. Widowed families were a substantial proportion of the poor who received assistance from charities, as benevolent society records reveal. Even for the comfortable classes, widowhood could entail a significant loss of home or financial security and a decline in social status.1

Despite such obstacles, illuminating and inspiring life histories of widows, spinsters and carers often displayed qualities of courage, independence and resourcefulness. My selection of five older women over almost a century does not claim to be representative, as every older woman was a different individual. Moreover, my choice reflects the limited archival sources available for elderly women, especially when manuscript diaries often peter out in later years. However, my selection does illustrate the variety of challenges for older women in Victoria (Ada Cambridge and Elizabeth Cassady), Western Australia (Eliza Shaw and Christina Clifton) and New South Wales (Dame Mary Gilmore), in both city and country locations, and a range of individual responses.

### Ada Cambridge (1844–1926): The Challenges of Advancing Years

Ada Cambridge was a talented Australian writer who reflected thoughtfully on her own experience of ageing and that of other women. She also wrote with insight about the variables influencing the way individuals experienced ageing, especially gender, health, poverty, temperament and spirituality. Moreover, Ada produced two significant essays, thirteen years apart, documenting her own marked change of attitude to ageing between her sixties and her eighties. Widowhood in 1916 transformed her financial situation, leaving her in dread of dependence in frail old age. This stimulated Ada to examine the plight of widowed and unmarried women in old age, often without family support or financial means. Her work provides a vital context for analysis of the experiences of elderly women in the years between 1880 and 1926.

Ada Cambridge's reputation as novelist and poet has never been as high as it was in the first two decades of the 20th century, as the 'doyenne of Australian writers'. Since the 1970s the complexity and value of her work has been more fully appreciated. Born in England in 1844, the daughter of a 'gentleman farmer', Ada came to Australia in 1870 with her Anglican clergyman husband. For some years Ada enjoyed the demanding life of a busy rural clergyman's wife in Victoria, but the tragic death of her baby daughter from whooping cough in 1874 transformed her life and religious faith. This shattering blow initiated a long spiritual journey away from orthodox institutional Christianity, accompanied by fragile health and intense depression. Ada sought refuge in her writing, as she did again when she lost two more children, in 1876 and in 1902. The decline in her health was accelerated by a serious carriage accident in 1877, and also a near-fatal miscarriage which left her an invalid for years. Her retreat into successful full-time writing offered emotional escape as well as vitally necessary family income.2

Ada Cambridge was fifty-eight in 1902 when her son Hugh died of typhoid at the age of twenty-four. Again she threw herself into writing to help her deal with the terrible blow, reinforced as always by the support of her devoted husband and family. Despite fragile health, diminishing energy, and latent depression, Ada faced cruel family loss with courage and stubborn hard work, earning the money the family needed. As Audrey Tate observes, loss was a recurring theme in her poems, reflecting her loss of children, country of birth, financial security and several homes.3 Ada's essay 'The Lonely Seas', for the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1911, reflected on her loss of faith in established religion, all the harder because it created a spiritual disharmony with her beloved clergyman husband. 'The Lonely Seas' was published when Ada was sixty-seven, and charted her agonizing spiritual journey over 20 years, from emotional despair and the intellectual uncertainty caused by biblical criticism, to a profound spiritual peace. Institutional religion, with its complicated dogmas, inconsistencies and impossible demands, now seemed unreal to her.4

Old age was traditionally the time when religion 'is called upon to justify itself once and for all', as the last buttress against despair, and with its promise of 'the bliss and glory of the future state'. Yet Ada had courageously chosen to step 'into the eternal dark without the eternal hope to cling to', including the hope of reunion with her three lost children in heaven. She had no regrets, for she could not know the future and it did not matter: 'one can float into the night, if without hope, without a thought of fear. If I perish, I perish—that is all.' She firmly believed 'the spirit of the illimitable Universe' was everywhere. She retained a far broader 'religious spirit' and was 'profoundly at peace'.5

Ada Cambridge specifically addressed the issue of ageing as it affected women in three essays. In 'The Lonely Seas' in 1911 she remembered her own bleak image of older people when she was younger:

What about the hour when you find yourself in the sixties, an old man—far, far worse, an old woman?... To realize that you have had your day and ceased to be, as a necessity or a power or a treasure of the world; that your place is on the shelf, with old-fashioned, outworn, discarded things; that you have eaten your cake to the dry crumbs and can expect no more—nothing but to grow daily feebler and uglier and more obsolete and superfluous, declining to that death which at least is inescapable—what an awful pass to come to!

In her essay 'The Retrospect' in 1909, when she was sixty-five, also in _Atlantic Monthly_ , Ada explored her actual experience of being a woman in her sixties, when she was surprised to find that older age carried many compensations. It was not the 'dreary time' she dreaded when young, for it could be a time of newly found freedom, even a second youth, with the trials of middle age and child-rearing overcome and relationships between the sexes more relaxed. Even if the beauty of youth was lost, older people could still charm, and the human spirit did not lose its nerve when closer to death. There was still hope for an enjoyable older age, and 'the far past is our fairy-land now'.6

Ada's views on old age had become far bleaker by 1922 when she wrote her essay 'Nightfall', reflecting her own experience of ageing in the intervening thirteen years. On the retirement of her husband George in 1912, they moved back to England at his wish for a quiet life in Cambridge. But George still saw England as home, whereas Ada (now sixty-eight) realized Australia had become her country. She was no longer an exile and in older age she wished to remain near her children in Australia. But she was resigned to George's decision, though she did not want to die in England. While in Cambridge she continued to support the family through her writing, though her output was affected by depression and lack of energy. Her last novel appeared in 1914 when she was seventy—she had published nearly a book each year for twenty years.7

Ada Cambridge was shocked by her husband's death in 1916 after 47 years of marriage, friendship and vital emotional support. Ada had little money but showed remarkable courage and determination in returning to Australia by sea in wartime. She found a 'tiny home' in Malvern near her daughter and received a very small annuity left to her by George. Her final years were undermined by increasing frailty and growing desperation about her inability to support herself financially. Her son Kenneth, a radiologist, was willing to help her with money, but she resolved to remain independent and not be a burden to her family. Her tiny annuity presumably precluded an application for a pension. Ada's situation became critical from 1921 when, at the age of seventy-seven, she had the first of a series of strokes which affected her eyesight badly. Her future prospects of increasing frailty and loss of independence appalled her.8

This was the bleak context for Ada's essay 'Nightfall', published by _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1922 when she was seventy-eight. She began by recalling how much she was enjoying early old age when she wrote 'Retrospect' in her mid-sixties in 1909. But, for her, the seventies and the approaching eighties were an entirely different matter; few writers had so far broken 'the silence in our old folks' world'. Men of means had very different experiences of ageing than women, who were 'comparatively so unprotected, comparatively so poor'. In this grim essay Ada anticipated her own fate in her few remaining years. In particular, there was minimal assistance for poverty-stricken 'old ladies of culture and refinement', who had to suffer in silence. She blamed this gender discrimination partly on men's assumption that they had a natural right to women's domestic services.9

Ada was 'continually harrowed by the contemplation of human derelicts' who suffered the adversities of old age with 'uncomplaining dignity':

I see them everywhere—old maids, old widows, old mothers left alone, retired governesses, and the like—drifting helplessly on the rocks. As long as strength holds out they keep at sea; smile, talk, dress, busy themselves to mask their secret humiliations, to propitiate the inexorable fates; but I know the dread that must haunt them all day and keep them awake at night—the terror of what is going to happen when they can no longer 'do' for themselves.

Ada shared that dread and proposed a scheme of 'charitable almshouses' for 'decayed gentlewomen' with limited means whom nobody cared for. Such women had a strong claim, because they had supported themselves during their active life but were unable to save for old age, and the meagre pension did not provide for a house. It would be a 'community of little homes', with services provided for meals, medicine and nursing on a non-profit basis. These elderly women with no family could rest in the care of efficient paid attendants and be 'beholden' to nobody, living a pleasant life until their eventual retirement to the almshouse infirmary. The decayed gentlewomen must be of 'the right sort' and would enjoy card-parties and exchanging confidences. In 1922 this was an early vision of future retirement villages in Australia. The reality was to be delayed until the Brotherhood of St Laurence created the first such village at Carrum Downs in the 1950s. Ada failed, however, to explain how her almshouses would be funded.10

Ada Cambridge believed that 'old people need old people, and young people are best without them. They have their own companions, families, interests and occupations'. She suggested that even people in their seventies and eighties could have a measure of happiness, given relatively good health. Her almshouse would be especially valuable for impecunious 'old maids', robbed by the war of husbands and children to look after them in old age. As to her own position, even if her imaginary almshouse existed, she would probably 'lack the resolution to go there':

If I had to part from my family before I must, although I might do it, I should break my heart. I should not think of doing it, nor attempt to do it, but for that urgent spirit of independence which is born, or not born, in one. I may add, that I should not be allowed to do it in any case. And it is continually being impressed upon me that the spirit of independence can be carried too far... And I am, indeed, as happy as the best of children can make me.

And yet even the best of children could not administer to all the infirmities and indignities of the elderly, especially for those with clear minds but frail bodies, and for 'the poor and childless and friendless—all my fellow left-overs, who have outlasted their term of usefulness'. Courage and the 'religious spirit' were needed in this elderly state.11

Sadly for Ada, her imaginary almshouse and its infirmary did not exist in 1922, and she was obliged by her own pride, ill-health and financial problems to resort to indifferent institutional help. Her evident dread of a dependent future in 1922 was well-founded, as also was her understanding of her own stubborn spirit of independence. As she pointed out in 'Nightfall', like many women she lacked the money to remain independent. Yet her pride evidently led her to conceal from her supportive children the extent of her loneliness and her physical and financial desperation. A series of strokes forced her to move to Mrs Boake's nursing home in Eltham which cost more than her small annuity could cover, but it was more tolerable than many. Ada wrote some rather desperate letters to George Robertson, her publisher at Heineman, hoping he would assist by republishing her earlier books to pay for her medical care. Her spirit of independence was indeed a liability, but she refused to take charity from her family or be a permanent burden, even when she was almost destitute.12

Ada dreaded the terminal move to a private hospital in Elsternwick, inevitable after a massive stroke in 1926 left her paralysed and almost blind. A letter from Elizabeth Parker of California must have cheered her a little: impressed by Ada's 'Nightfall' essay, Parker aimed to reprint one thousand copies and establish 'Nightfall Clubs' in the United States, following Ada's almshouse model. Ada died of heart failure in 1926 aged eighty-two. Many years later Mary Gilmore wrote of a visit to Ada in 1925: 'As to Ada Cambridge, old and bedridden from partial paralysis when I went to see her, she was I think the greatest woman in personality and breadth and power of mind, I ever met. Like a fallen tree, she was still a giant.'13 Ada bore the trials of extreme old age with admirable stoicism, courage and a stubborn independence of spirit.

### Elizabeth Shaw (1794?–1876) and Christina Grant Clifton (1820?–1909): Western Australian Widows

Widowhood in old age in late nineteenth century Western Australia was particularly challenging. As Tom Stannage noted, in 1884 the colony was a small and extremely isolated imperial outpost, with a population of only 33 000, including Perth's 6500. The minimal provision for the frail elderly included the Old Men's Home on the banks of the Swan River in Perth, with 265 inmates in 1900, including many ex-convicts.14 In this context, the stories of the widowhood of Elizabeth (Eliza) Shaw in the 1870s and Christina Clifton in isolated Australind, at the turn of the century, are especially revealing.

Eliza Shaw's experience at Belvoir in the Upper Swan region in Western Australia shows how a resourceful and courageous widow could be undermined by adverse circumstances and the infirmities of extreme old age. Eliza Shaw's husband, William, died unexpectedly in 1862. Her final diary was for 1875–6, when she was eighty-four: her eldest son George, who had been running the estate, had just died at the early age of forty-seven, leaving the estate under mortgage. Eliza's second son, Bob, was an unstable alcoholic who sought to supplant his mother as manager at Belvoir. She would have been delighted to make him manager had he been competent. At eighty-two Eliza administered a large estate, assisted only by an alcoholic son, four intemperate farm labourers, and her daughter Fanny. She noted in her diary for 21 January 1876: 'Bob quite unfit for our business or to command himself.' Since he was inebriated before noon each day, she and Fanny were exhausted by attending to him in addition to their primary estate responsibilities. Eliza was determined to run the estate herself and seems to have been fairly competent in circumstances which ultimately became too challenging. By 15 February 1876 she consulted a lawyer who advised that her only option was to call in the mortgage, sell the estate and live on the proceeds. Meanwhile Bob refused to take instructions from her or do any estate work, apart from making the wine. Ten days later she noted, 'my present trials are almost greater than I can bear', with Bob 'helplessly ill' and the other hands at the races.15

From late February 1876, Eliza Shaw, who rarely complained, noted that she was increasingly unwell, sick and faint. By 10 March she was devastated to report that Belvoir was advertised for sale, as the only option. Eliza wrote of her deep sorrow and heavy trials: 'sad and gloomy seems my future... left alone in the world... I am feeling how much the heart can bear... I fear and tremble.' On 15 March she was subject to abuse from Bob, 'conduct and language disgraceful and unjust... there are things unspeakable'. His behaviour was 'defiant almost amounting to blows and threats'. She was panic stricken when he threatened to take her to court, apparently aiming to stop the sale and seize the estate for himself. 'How I bear all my troubles in both mind and body.' She finally sold her beloved Belvoir in late 1876 for £1300, after forty-six years of devotion, leaving her only £361. The prolonged struggle to keep the estate in the family and the battle with her son severely depleted her shattered physical and emotional resources: she died a few months later.16 Maintaining the family estate would have been an immense challenge for any widow in her eighties, but it was impossible in the face of mounting debts and threats from an alcoholic son.

The widowhood of Christina Grant Clifton twenty-five years later was very different in that she was strongly supported in old age by a large, loving family. Her challenge came rather from the debilitating nature of her illness, which may have been Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's was not diagnosed until decades later, and would have been unusual in her time because so few people reached their eighties. Christina had married Robert Williams Clifton in London in 1840 before leaving for Western Australia, where they had thirteen children. In 1861 Robert, Christina and their family moved to isolated Australind, 163 kilometres south of Perth, where Robert farmed with his three brothers. Two daughters, Christina Elinor and Laura Cecilia, remained unmarried at their home, Upton House, taking care of their parents in old age. In this they followed a long-established English tradition whereby many middle- and upper-class spinsters performed a vital social role within the family, caring for ageing parents until their deaths, and assisting as nurses and unpaid housekeepers.

Christina Elinor and Laura Cecilia were unusual, however, in that each fulfilled a necessary public role as postmistress in the tiny settlement of Australind. This was a Clifton family tradition dating from 1842, whereby they worked from an office in the family home, and earned a minute salary. Christina was postmistress for fifty-five years from 1863, until her eyesight failed in 1913, when her sister Laura took her place until 1947, when she was eighty-two. In 1885 Robert Williams Clifton had signed a contract with his son Algernon Francis Clifton, to hand over his substantial property 'Alverstoke' upon Algernon's marriage. Significantly, in return Algernon was made contractually responsible for the financial support of his ageing parents and any spinster sisters for the remainder of their lives. Robert's concern for the welfare of his single daughters after his death prompted this unusual agreement, with Algernon little knowing how long his two sisters and parents would live.17

Robert Williams Clifton died in 1897, aged eighty. His daughter-in-law paid tribute afterwards, 'he would never give way to being an invalid although he was in frail health for some time'.18 From 1893 he had been 'very feeble' at times and could do little work, though he still tried to do his share of the dairy work, and read a good deal. On her husband's death Christina Grant Clifton tried to resign herself to God's will and focus on all the mercies remaining, including her large loving family: 'but oh! The blank in the dear old house is dreadful and nearly every room in the house brings back to me sweet memories of his care and kindness!' But her two daughters were very good to her and 'the greatest comfort in my sorrow'. She was especially grateful to her son Cecil who had replaced her husband as the 'businessman of the family'. She was 'trying to be brave' and take up her duties as well as possible for the sake of the remaining family.19

However, Christina's letters reveal that she was already declining in health soon after her husband's death. Only two months afterwards, in July 1897, she complained that her memory was now quite unreliable, and she kept losing her handbag and spectacles. She tried to keep busy with family concerns, and remained kind, thoughtful and as positive as possible. By September 1897 she admitted she was not feeling well at times, becoming 'very low spirited' and even more concerned about her memory.20 Christina's correspondence ends there and her two daughters took up her story.

Three years later, on New Years' Eve 1901, Christina Elinor sadly reported to her brother Cecil from Upton House that their mother, now aged eighty-one, was unable to walk after a fall. Their doctor was away and it took the locum a whole day to reach them from Perth. The locum said that Christina Grant had suffered 'a slight stroke of paralysis, caused by a small blood vessel bursting in the brain'. They were most upset at the locum's warning that 'the [next] attack is generally fatal', though he advised on precautions against another attack. They did not like to leave Christina Grant alone, especially as 'she requires so much attendance'. They had to rub her arm and leg several times a day with oil and brandy, but it was a challenge to help her in and out of bed as she was so heavy. Laura 'divined the sad truth' that their mother was paralysed and would never be able to drive again in a carriage: 'of course she may get better, but we shall always be so anxious.'21

From 1901 Laura, the youngest daughter, became full-time carer for their mother while her sister Christina (now almost sixty) attended to her postmistress duties and the family accounts. Their mother became increasingly dependent on Laura, who was 'up and down with her many times'. They continued to read, play and talk with her, as she was now confined to her room, restless and confused in her speech, asking for the same things many times over. By April 1902 their anxiety reached new heights when their mother complained she was going blind. Dr Williams, the local practitioner, pronounced a verdict of cataracts in both eyes, but the two sisters worried that 'perhaps he does not know much about eyes'. Yet they were afraid the Perth medical practitioner, Dr Kellsall, would charge 'a fabulous' amount, beyond their resources, to come down from the city. If indeed the problem was cataracts, 'he can do nothing'. But they decided to use their mother's remaining £16 and 'hunt up some more' medical opinions to see if her eyes could be treated. Fortunately Dr Kelsall's partner, Dr Horrocks, was in Bunbury, but his verdict reinforced that of Dr Williams22—their mother was gradually failing and losing her sight. These exchanges highlight the family's very limited financial resources, as well as the problems of gaining reliable medical assistance in isolated Australind. Even if the mother or the sisters had been eligible for old age pensions, they were not available in Western Australia until the introduction of the Commonwealth pension in 1908.

Christina Grant Clifton now needed day and night care, and sometimes talked incessantly, as Christina Elinor reported to her brother Cecil,

We are having a terrible time with poor Mother, the turn her illness has taken is most distressing... She gets so impatient sometimes. So unlike her old sweet self!... She has such a distressed look on her face when she has these restless fits... it certainly is a strange illness, and the most distressing I have ever seen... If Laura stops singing she shouts at her or slaps her... One feels in despair how to manage her when these attacks come on.23

Her illness, including mental deterioration and dementia following a series of strokes, is far better understood today. In Western Australia in 1902 few people reached Christina Clifton's advanced years. Meanwhile, as if their mother's dreadful illness was not enough, the two sisters also had to cope with the unspecified poor health of their Aunt Lucy in 1902. In March,'Poor old Aunt Lucy was fainting and nearly tumbling over a good many times'. She seems to have been living in rooms in the town of Busselton, but as she was so 'very shaky' Laura and Christina took her to the hospital, since they could not look after two frail old ladies at Upton House. Aunt Lucy had no money but the kind doctor managed to obtain a bed without charge.24 However, three weeks later Lucy was improving and wanted to 'come home' to Upton House. Laura felt desperate, 'I really don't know how we _could_ have her, poor old thing, she wants looking after and as it is I cannot possibly manage to get the things done here'. No other family member seemed willing to take Aunt Lucy. If she was to board in Busselton, £60 must be subscribed and Laura reasonably insisted that 'the other relations must give something'. By May 1902 Aunt Lucy had been told her bed in the hospital was needed, but no-one in Busselton was willing or able to take her in. It was decided that they must care for Aunt Lucy at Upton House, as well as their mother, for at least two months, with a cousin named Rose Lawrence to assist.25

The Clifton brothers regarded care of the two seriously ill old ladies as their sisters' responsibility, but in September 1902 the sisters insisted on some financial support from the men. Laura informed Cecil, the family 'business manager', that they could cope no longer in caring for two invalids as well as paying the costs for Aunt Lucy: 'It is a subject that has worried me more than I can say. I believe the poor old lady would be very unhappy if she thought we wanted to send her away.' But their mother required all of Laura's time, and Aunt Lucy had deteriorated since she came to them. Christina volunteered to donate £5 a year if Aunt Lucy boarded elsewhere, but only £2.10 if she remained with them at Upton House, 'to say nothing of the anxiety and worry of the poor old woman'. However, brother Joe Clifton relented when he realised the gravity of the situation. He deemed it impossible for Aunt Lucy to remain at Upton House, 'while Mother is in her present deplorable and distressing condition. Laura cannot go on any longer without rest at night, or else she will be breaking down'. Moreover, their mother's pitiable state was making Aunt Lucy even more miserable.26

Two months later, Aunt Lucy was still with the sisters at Upton House, but several brothers had at last agreed to contribute annually to 'Aunt Lucy's fund' for her maintenance. Brother Archie Clifton at Lawler offered to give £12 a year, while brother Algie at Alverstoke would send £5 annually, though he thought even a total of £100 a year insufficient to compensate for the worry and anxiety of Aunt Lucy at Upton House. The sisters had the constant responsibility of their mother: 'she seems stone blind now and perfectly helpless, and her poor mind almost gone in many ways.'27 There the family correspondence on this subject ends. Their mother, Christina Grant Clifton, did not die until six years later in 1909, 'after a long and wearisome illness'. She left eleven surviving children and fifty-six grandchildren.28

The gender imbalance of roles in the Clifton family was extreme: the numerous Clifton brothers were called upon to assist in a minimal way, with finance, even when they recognised their two sisters were vastly overburdened by the practical care. This narrative from Western Australia over a century ago has particular resonance for us today. The growing challenge of dementia is now widely recognised and feared in the twenty-first century, as it threatens a larger proportion of an ever-increasing aged population over eighty. The Clifton correspondence also highlights the continuing pressure on women to act as carers, particularly since governments now increasingly recognize the value of home care by the family. However, it is sobering to remember that even in 1980 the devastation caused by dementia was still little recognized. And though no cure is yet available, research and advocacy for dementia has advanced since the 1980s, with about half the patients in nursing homes now suffering from this disease.

### Elizabeth Cassady (1827?–1911): A Fortunate Old Age

Elizabeth Cassady's narrative of ageing serves to remind us that a minority of women were more fortunate in financial means and in the practical support of a large family: indeed they were closer to the male experiences explored in the next chapter. Elizabeth Cassady of Cassady's Bridge in the Western Districts of Victoria and her late husband, William Cassady, had nine surviving children. Four sons, Alex, Sid, Joe and Charlie, were still living at home in 1901 and working mainly for their mother, a strong and active family matriarch in charge of a cooperative family enterprise. The eldest son, Willie, rented Harkness farm from his mother, and shared it with his sister Cissy and her husband Fred Miller. During the last ten years of Elizabeth Cassady's life, her benevolent control of family affairs almost imperceptibly shifted to a more cooperative network of care and companionship. She was more fortunate than Eliza Shaw in being twenty years younger on widowhood, able to control her estate effectively for some years, and having full family support when her health failed her.

In June 1901 Willie Cassady's wife Bessie died in childbirth and Elizabeth, at age sixty-four, immediately determined to rear her granddaughter Annie herself. Elizabeth was a phonetic speller who used little punctuation and probably had little formal education. Her diary entries were minimal and repetitive, certainly not self-reflective; yet they reveal an active and well-organized life, with constant interaction with neighbours, friends, family and a live-in servant. Her diary entry on 3 July 1901 noted starkly: 'This afternoon I walked up to Willy's house I was very much upset when I went into the House to think that the dear little wife that we all thought would come home so happy with her baby is in her grave it seems too dreadful but such is life made up of partings.' Two days later Elizabeth, practical as always, purchased a cot for the baby from a sale and hired a girl called Marty to help with the child. Following Elizabeth's first night with the baby she noted, 'I was a bit excited about the baby but all things considered I think I got on very well'. This was quite a burden to take on at sixty-four years of age but she accepted it readily. Her eldest son, Willy, spent some time after work each day with his daughter, and several neighbours called in daily to see the baby, who gave her grandmother some 'pretty bad nights'. Elizabeth's days were reorganized around Annie's needs, as on 5 August, 'I cooked the dinner and minded the baby I had no company today I made the baby a petticoat'.29

For several years after 1901 Elizabeth still controlled the routine of her household and farm. Each diary entry commenced with the weather and noted that Joe and Charlie were at work on the farm; Elizabeth often assisted her servant in cooking the midday dinner for the boys working on the farm, an essential part of daily routine. Elizabeth seems to have been in good health until about 1907, when at seventy, she began to complain more of bad colds, headaches and tiredness. She also slowly became more dependent on her children. Cissy came over to help more often with housework, while Mrs Jago began to come weekly to do the washing. The regular midday dinners for the 'boys' ceased as they became too arduous for Elizabeth. On 18 June 1907 she had 'a bad night with Annie' and she also had a severe cold. 'The boys', Charlie and Joe, lit Elizabeth's fire in the bedroom and did 'all they can to help me', including a cup of tea in bed in the morning.

The turning point towards frail old age came in late July 1907 when the diary was written in a different hand, by one of her sons. Dr Scott diagnosed Elizabeth's complaint as erysipelas, a serious strep-tococcal infection. Charlie went to town for medication and Cissy came to help in the house. Dr Scott declared on 13 August 1907 that Elizabeth's heart was weak, so she must rest and 'live on slops'. Nurse Halliwell came for a week to care for Elizabeth who seemed slowly to improve, and at last they found an excellent housekeeper in Mrs Pool. On 23 September Elizabeth noted, 'tonight I was very ill it is 9 months since I had a turn with my heart'. The heart attack was repeated five days later and intermittently in the next two years, with Mrs Pool often staying the night. Elizabeth's family spoiled her: Willie brought breakfast and tea in bed, while Joe trimmed her corns and arranged for visitors. Occasionally Nurse Halliwell was called in again for emergencies, and Mrs Pool applied mustard plasters to Elizabeth's chest when she developed bronchitis. Daughter Cissy called even more often as her mother declined, bringing groceries, a fowl, or a complete dinner.

By June 1910 Elizabeth was sick enough to need Nurse Halliwell's services again, assisted by Mrs Pool, washing and 'minding me'. By October 1910 normality seemed temporarily restored, but a year later Nurse Halliwell was again called, following more 'bad turns'. On 15 November 1911 Charlie recorded, 'Mother died 1.20 this morning'. By the standards of her own time, Elizabeth had a remarkably fortunate experience of old age, especially for a woman. Until the age of seventy she still managed her family estate effectively, with the strong support of a loving family. Before her death she only had four years of ill-health, and survived until the age of seventy-four—an achievement in 1911—loved and cared for by her family.

### Dame Mary Gilmore (1865–1962): An Inspiration for the Elderly

This chapter commenced with Ada Cambridge's note of deep pessimism concerning the prospects for elderly women up to the 1920s. It will close with a remarkable story of determination and resilience by an even more famous author, born a generation later, in the face of extremely poor health and limited financial means. Mary Gilmore's detailed diaries for the years 1940 to 1950 challenge the reader to recall that she was already seventy-five in 1940. Her diaries offer a thorough analytical account of the serious illnesses and diminishing physical resources of her advancing years, still balanced by a remarkably productive life of creative achievement. Her friend Hugh McCrae described her as 'our greatest national poet', gifted with 'courage, truth and wisdom, tempered with kindness and grace'. For T. Inglis Moore she was not only a passionate idealist and crusader against social injustice, but also an assured poet, literary critic and journalist.30

Mary Cameron was born in 1865 near Goulburn in New South Wales, the daughter of Scottish migrants. When she was twelve she became an assistant teacher in several small schools in mining towns around Albury. The poverty and exploitation she saw aroused her sympathy for socialism and for the great labour strikes of the 1890s. She participated in William Lane's Utopian socialist experiment in Paraguay, where she married William Gilmore, a Victorian shearer, in 1897, and had a son, William. The three returned to a poverty-stricken life in the bush near Casterton on the isolated Gilmore property in Western Victoria. Extreme loneliness and inability to express her creative energies eventually pushed Mary to the desperate step of leaving her family: for years she was torn between her domestic responsibilities and 'the vital impulse demanding her fulfilment as a writer'. From 1908–31 she edited the women's page of the _Worker_ , where she campaigned for workers, women and Aboriginal people, and for better health, social reform, and Australian literature.31

In 1912, at the age of forty-seven, Mary Gilmore moved to Sydney as a staff member at the _Worker_ , while her husband and son joined Will's brother on the family land in Queensland.32 She saw her family in Queensland only rarely thereafter, though her affection for them remained powerful. Mary retired from the _Worker_ in 1930, devoting more time to poetry, crusades for social causes, and support for the Labor Party. She published several acclaimed volumes of prose and verse, as well as two volumes of reminiscences; her literary stature was recognized when in 1937 she became a Dame of the British Empire. Mary remained poor in these years, as her income at the _Worker_ was £4 per week at best, forcing her to economise on food. After she left the _Worker_ her meagre income in the 1930s was subsidized to a limited extent by Will and Billy from Queensland.33

Despite her numerous visitors, Mary lived alone and her personal life could be solitary, especially as severe health problems increasingly limited her capacity to travel and socialize. She had a long history of poor health from childhood, including tuberculosis at age thirteen, with various bouts thereafter. She suffered from 'constitutional high blood pressure and a ricketty heart' from her thirties,34 in an age before blood pressure medication revolutionized treatment. Mary had long periods in hospital in Goulburn in the 1920s with her labouring heart and hypertension, having driven herself to the point of dizziness and blackouts. Mary's diaries reveal little about her emotions or her spirituality. She was born a Presbyterian and remained so, while finding religious renewal and inner serenity with the Catholic nuns during her hospital stays in Goulburn in the 1920s. At the age of ninety-four she wrote of her 'religious innerness... The religious is an integral part of my being. Not only integral but essential'.35

Mary Gilmore's extraordinary diaries reveal her reflective responses to ageing in the ten years from 1940 when she was seventy-five. She wrote as a campaigner for the elderly, and documented in detail her own intimate reactions to sharply declining health,. During this decade she lived in a small flat on the Darlinghurst Road in King's Cross in central Sydney, with very little money, and suffering from the shortages during the Second World War. It was far from easy but Mary never complained, focusing her limited energies instead on helping others and coping with her severe medical problems. Mary lived much of the time in a hive of generous activity, with numerous visitors including troubled people seeking assistance. She was constantly writing letters, including innumerable thoughtful and generous letters to fellow writers, besides reading manuscripts for young writers and attending meetings. Mary was far from being an invalid, despite poor health and advancing years. She was a founder of the Lyceum Club in Sydney, elected its president in 1935 and participated in its social and intellectual activities thereafter.

Mary's diary from May 1940, when she was seventy-five, mentioned that she had lost over a stone in weight in the previous two months. A typical entry in June noted, 'Heart terribly tired after the rushing about... Blood pressure up badly tonight'. Her November entry was typical: 'Too many things to do, and only one pair of hands, tired eyes, tired heart and old age to do them with! I wept the tears of weary old age this morning, but all the same I did my work—got up and did it.' She subsequently regretted this revealing entry: 'I am not in the habit of talking my own tears... A diary is a weakness; it opens doors otherwise shut, unless it is a mere record of events and not feelings.'36

A particular feature of ill-health in old age is the complicated combination of medical problems, which can make individual symptoms harder to diagnose and treat. Early in 1941 Mary 'cleaned up hundreds of the last three months letters' in one day and was too tired for a midday meal. Not surprisingly, 'heart not good at all. It sort of shudders or shakes every now and then instead of beating as it should'. The doctor warned that her heart was badly enlarged because of high blood pressure. Mary was often exhausted from insomnia and her memory for names eluded her. She also suffered prolonged attacks of gallstones. Even harder to bear was the gradual decline of her eyesight: 'The worst is the teeming thought, the teeming recollections, the mind as full and active as fifty years ago, and the agony of not being able to use my eyes to outlet it all!' She regretted that two doctors had each damaged her sight further by poor treatment. Indeed she had abstained for long periods from reading or writing books in the hope of retaining her sight for longer—a terrible sacrifice. It was 'death in life' as she had so little time left in which to write, but the threat of blindness stood over her 'like a volcano'.37

Mary's diary is particularly revealing about the common dread of high blood pressure for older people in the years before beta-blockers were available. She remarked many times on 'how terrified people were, and still are, of it'. Katharine Susannah Prichard later shared that fear, though she had the advantage of effective medication. At seventy-eight years of age Mary Gilmore had learned that she must stop work when her blood pressure began 'boiling up and down... for the margin left me is very, very small'. She was afraid to commence writing a new book 'because I could not help going as hard as ever', causing her blood pressure to soar. So instead she wrote this detailed diary 'to relieve the mind of its teeming thought'. Her heart 'turns' continued to remind her that she might die at any time. On a number of occasions she reluctantly asked visitors to leave because 'I was so exhausted with the tired heart I almost collapsed'.38 From 1944 she also complained of a painful liver and stomach, so 'I felt I was on the edge of the grave'. Meanwhile a tooth abscess sent her to the dentist where she was resigned to the extraction of all her bottom teeth, having lost her top teeth in 1942. But the long list of serious ailments rarely prevented her seeing visitors, writing letters and responding to good causes.39 As she approached eighty, she marvelled at the intensity with which she lived and her continuing vitality despite physical weaknesses. She also wrote a good deal about the inevitable loss of dear old friends and death was rarely far from her thoughts: 'I am lonely for the old. Louis Esson is gone. Gordon went earlier; Gordon Bennett is gone; and now I hear that Hugh McCrae is very ill.'40

In 1945, when she turned eighty, Mary Gilmore's world was transformed and her resilience undermined. In that fateful year both her husband Will Gilmore and her son Billy died; the two losses 'shattered something' within her. Will died suddenly of blood-poisoning in February 1945, at age seventy-eight, after an infected arm was amputated. She had loved them both, though she rarely saw them after she left. After Will died she noted in March 1945, 'Tired, and tired, and tired, heart and body. Asking the questions that can never be answered'. Two months later she had a serious stomach 'haemorrhage'. In July 1945 her beloved son Billy died of pneumonia, leaving her weak, tired and heart-broken, wondering 'if the end of my tether is not in sight'. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, except the 'everlasting consciousness of grief and loss'. She had the worst heart attack so far, with some paralysis. There was little point in seeing the doctor, as she was tired of their familiar beaten look. There was just one bright spot in that terrible 80th year. To her genuine surprise, the Commonwealth Literary Fund awarded her a Literary Pension on her 80th birthday at the maximum rate of £3 per week, though she had not applied. She was 'astounded, elated, and grateful' for the recognition of her achievement. The money permitted the luxury of a secretary to type her manuscripts, including the diaries to be donated to libraries.41

From 1946 onwards Mary was more resigned to her increasing weakness and her damaged heart. She was very frail, walked slowly and her life-long curvature of the spine was now 'beating me at last'.42 In 1947 she considered her reserves of energy 'depleted to the last margin'. Like Ada Cambridge, she regarded men as fortunate in having wives to manage their homes, cooking, and shopping for them: in addition to all of that, she had 'my writing to do, my collection to work on, my diary to keep up, my endless letters to write... with a worn-out tired old body (for which no doctor can now do anything) and nearly blind eyes'. She often noted, 'the work has to be done: it counts, I don't'. Mary had no illusions left about her health in 1947 since two eminent doctors decreed that no operation was possible. They could do no more for her. There were days when she thought she would not survive until evening, and others when climbing into a tram could leave her nearly 'insensible with pain'. Even worse were her increasing concerns about declining memory and failing eyesight. Mary's memory problem was revealed in the occasional repetition and slight confusion in the diary in these years. In May 1947 Dr Charles Blackburn advised that cataracts were growing in both eyes, which were already affected by glaucoma. Each adverse condition prevented treatment or operation on the other—not the case today. Mary told no-one the bad news as 'I equally hate publicity (of my ills) and pity. At nearly 82 I may not have to worry long'.43

There ends this extraordinary ten-year diary. W. H. Wilde's biography, _Courage a Grace_ , tells the story of Mary's remaining years. Even moving around her flat became difficult. Still, in 1954 she was able to publish her final volume of poems, _Fourteen Men_ , and noted 'I can die happy now'. Following the celebrations for her 89th birthday in 1954, the long-delayed major medical crisis finally arrived. Mary miraculously survived a major operation for cancer of the colon. She observed, 'Went too hard and fast for 89', and was given only three months to live. This reinforced her conviction that the rule for life must be 'to face up and endure', with her habitual courage and willpower. In 1957 William Dobell painted a controversial portrait of Mary, as 'a splendid person with a tremendous vitality and dignity'. Mary suffered the death of many close friends, but one that hit especially hard was that of her dear friend Hugh McCrae in 1958, when she was ninety-three: 'the gates begin to shut... and there is no one there. The only thing then is to shut the door on loneliness and still go forward. All that matters to life is work'.44

Mary Gilmore was confined to her Kings Cross flat almost completely from 1959 to her death in December 1962 at the age of ninety-seven. She was helped by a succession of housekeepers. Such home care for the frail aged was advocated from the 1950s by the Old People's Welfare Council, and is an increasing source of aged care today. It was Katharine Prichard's choice in later life, and Ada Cambridge would doubtless have welcomed it. Remarkably, a letter from Reverend Harold Hawkins of Leichardt Methodist Mission survives in her papers from 1960, when she was ninety-five. He understood that Mary was not currently interested in a flat at 'Weroona... A Home for Aged Ladies', but might reconsider at a later date. Mary's cousin, Miss White, appeared to be happy with full board and care at Weroona, but even at ninety-five Mary could not be persuaded to give up her independence.45 At such an age Mary was fortunate to have escaped the nursing homes (of variable quality) available in 1962. Wilde portrays Mary in these last years as 'now truly a national figure. Her final years were made memorable by a wealth of public adulation'. Mary Gilmore's strength ebbed more quickly in the last two years, 'Dying of old age is not just a pleasant going down hill'. Yet she continued with her _Tribune_ column and concentrated on putting her affairs in order.46

Dame Mary Gilmore's story of old age is truly inspirational. Throughout her decades of ageing, older people had continued to be largely ignored by governments and social policies. She herself had endured hardship, poverty and the trials of war and economic depression. Mary's message to other old people was to be courageous and determined, and not give up. Judith Wright wrote to Nettie Palmer late in 1954:

Have you read Mary Gilmore's _Fourteen Men_? Isn't it magnificent?... Her thought seems to have deepened and broadened so much with her experience of age itself. Oh, dear, I bow before her so very low. I wish I could imagine myself capable of working like that at seventy-plus.47

Though Dame Mary was highly unusual in her literary gifts and fame, she shared the challenges common to many older women. She had far more than her share of health problems and lived in a small inner-city flat on a meagre income. The Hutchinson Report of 1954 reminds us that by their late eighties only about 7 per cent of women still had husbands and most were widowed or single. Women increasingly outnumbered men in the older age groups because they lived longer and often survived their husbands. Many more elderly women than men lived in poverty, alone and often lonely, with considerably smaller incomes than men of the same age.48 Even so, by the time Dame Mary died, the situation of older women had improved in relative terms—the world described so vividly by Ada Cambridge half a century earlier had largely passed by.

### Notes

1 Gibson, Diane, 'Getting Better Will Take Some Time', pp. 173–86.

2 Cambridge, _Thirty Years in Australia_ , pp. 126–31, 140–1; Tate, ch. 9; Cambridge, 'The Lonely Seas', pp. 95–100; Roe, 'The Scope of Women's Thought is Necessarily Less', pp. 388–403.

3 Tate, p. 131.

4 Cambridge, 'The Lonely Seas', pp. 95–100.

5 ibid.

6 ibid.; Cambridge, 'The Retrospect', pp. 130–4; Tate, pp. 215–6.

7 Tate, pp. 218–32.

8 ibid., pp. 232–8.

9 Cambridge, 'Nightfall', pp. 231–4.

10 ibid.

11 ibid.

12 Tate, pp. 241–4; Wilde, W. H., _Courage a Grace_ , p. 158.

13 ibid.

14 Stannage, pp. 85, 257.

15 Shaw, Eliza, Diary, LISWA, MN 87 Acc. 2088A/1.

16 ibid.; Durack, pp. 234–52.

17 Clifton, Alverstoke, pp. 55, 76–7, 80.

18 ibid., p. 80.

19 Christina Grant Clifton to son Robert Cecil Clifton, 8 Feb., 10 Dec. 1893; 12 May, 4 July, 5 Sept. 1897, Clifton Papers, LISWA, MSS, MN 1294, Acc. 2587A/8.

20 Christina Grant Clifton to son Cecil, 4 July, 5 Sept. 1897, ibid.

21 Christina Elinor Clifton to brother Cecil Clifton, 31 Dec 1901, ibid., Acc. 4184A/99.

22 Laura Clifton to brother Cecil Clifton, 22 March; 1 April 1902, ibid., Acc. 4184A/112–3.

23 Christina Elinor to Cecil, 15 June 1902, ibid., Acc. 4184A/122.

24 Laura to Cecil, 22 March 1902, ibid., Acc. 4184A/112.

25 Laura to Cecil, 10, 21 May 1902, ibid., Acc. 4184A/118–9.

26 Christina Elinor to Cecil, 9 Sept. 1902; Joe Clifton to brother Cecil Clifton, 9 Sept. 1902, ibid., Acc. 4184A/128–9.

27 Archie to Cecil, 30 Sept 1902; Algie to brother Cecil Clifton, 20 Sept 1902; Joe to Cecil, 12 Sept. 1902, ibid., Acc. 4184A/134, 133, 131.

28 Clifton, Alverstoke, p. 80.

29 Elizabeth Cassady, Diary, SLV, MS 11752. The following three paragraphs are also drawn from this diary and entries are identified by dates.

30 Moore and Wilde, pp. xv–xx.

31 ibid., p. xviii.

32 ibid., pp. xxi–xxvii; Spender, pp. 241–2.

33 Wilde, W H, _Courage a Grace_ , pp. 214, 276, 385.

34 ibid., pp. 276, 214, 217.

35 ibid., p. 277.

36 Gilmore, Dame Mary, Diary, May, June, Nov. 1940, NLA, MS 614.

37 ibid., 12, 29 Jan.; 16, 26, 28 Feb. 1941.

38 ibid., 30 Nov. 1943; 30 Mar.; 2, 4 Dec. 1944.

39 ibid., 17 May; 7 July; 21 Sept. 1944.

40 Mary Gilmore to Hugh McCrae, 29 Jan. 1944, McCrae Papers, SLV, MS 12831, box 3607/3–4.

41 Gilmore, Dame Mary, Diary, 1 Mar., 15 July; 30 Sept.; 13, 15 Oct.. 1945, NLA, MS 614.

42 ibid., 16, 21, 31 Mar. 1946.

43 ibid., 14 Mar., 16 May 1947.

44 Wilde, W H, _Courage a Grace_ , pp. 423–4, 429, 442–3, 445, 452–3.

45 Revd Harold L Hawkins to Mary Gilmore, 31 Aug. 1960, Dame Mary Gilmore, Diary, NLA, MS 8766.

46 Wilde, W H, _Courage a Grace_ , pp. 455–66.

47 Judith Wright to Nettie Palmer, [1954], Palmer Papers, NLA, MSS, MS 1174.

48 Hutchinson, pp. 53–9.

## 3

## Older Men in Victoria, 1870–1933: From James Henty to John Springthorpe

The relatively small number of surviving diaries written by men were often those of respectable men of the comfortable classes, with supportive families, helpful wives and unmarried daughters living at home. There is little evidence in these diaries of any stigma on the grounds of age against such older men, who had mostly been powerful and successful in their working lives. Indeed, Peter Laslett suggests that the passage of time adds to the influence of highly successful politicians, businessmen, thinkers and artists. So long as they occupied their positions by merit, achievement and aggression, they remained exempt from prejudices against the elderly. Sir Henry Parkes offers an obvious Australian example. He was revered into advanced age as long as his political vigour and success were sustained; once he began to fail politically, and perhaps also socially, through what was considered an unwise marriage to a much younger woman, he was suddenly perceived as elderly.1 However, the meagre surviving records for older women suggest a more powerful cultural bias against them, especially as so few attained the heights of power and success possible for fortunate men in the decades before the First World War.

I have selected four men's diaries from the 1870s onwards, from the few sources available. Most of these men were not especially self-reflective regarding their experiences of old age, though their narratives are often unintentionally revealing. However, Dr John Springthorpe, writing between 1920 and 1933, was unusually thoughtful about his aspirations and disappointments in advancing years. Many variables affected whether old age was contented and rewarding or unhappy and disappointing. Class, wealth and gender feature high on this list of variables, as men of the comfortable classes had major advantages of power, position and means. Beyond these fundamental variables, health, family, religion, education and character could profoundly influence the outcome. Old age had its costs, even for men from the comfortable classes.

James Henty and Reynell Johns started the ageing process with significant advantages of class, position, and reputation, reinforced by supportive families, but both suffered from serious ill-health which had to be managed from an early stage. Religious faith sustained James Henty, Reynell Johns and John Springthorpe, to varying degrees, in the face of adverse circumstances. A strong character, positive attitude to life, and a sense of achievement in family life and occupation contributed to a more fulfilled old age for Henty, Edward White, and most of all for John Springthorpe. There were also the diverse forces of generational transition: the differences caused by changing social and economic policies, and the uneven impact of economic depression and war.

### James Henty (1800–1882)

James Henty represents an early generation of Australian pioneers who died before the end of the nineteenth century. His family, class, wealth, reputation, character and religious beliefs were positive forces in his experience of ageing, but his one major disadvantage of poor health eventually triumphed. His story is well known: he came from a large and influential English pioneering family who settled in the colony of Victoria as merchants and farmers. James sat in the Victorian Parliament from 1853 and from 1856 the Upper House until his death in 1882. He was chairman of Victoria's first railway and of its State Savings Bank. As Marnie Bassett noted, he was 'to the last a man of strong principles, deep feelings and iron will'. James was the eldest of seven Henty brothers and married Charlotte Carter, who died before 1870. James had seven children, including his sons Henry and Herbert who became his business partners from 1856. He had an extensive and close family with twenty-three grandchildren from his three sons, and eleven more from one of his daughters, Frances, who was married to James Balfour, a former partner in his business.2

James Henty's detailed diaries cease two years before his death in 1882. The diary is not reflective and he remained largely silent on issues which must have caused him intense anxiety in old age. The unity and conviviality of his large family was deeply important to him. But James was troubled by serious tension with his son-in-law James Balfour, who gave Fanny little help in the care of their large family. Occasional diary references suggest James Henty's antipathy to his son-in-law; on 24 November 1874 he observed that 'Balfour's treatment and neglect' of Fanny caused him 'very great pain and grief', especially during her long illness. He also seems to have had concerns about the future of his sons after his death.3

James Henty's diary focused strongly on the positive features of older age, especially his loving devotion to his family. In September 1870, as on numerous other occasions, he delighted that 'my whole family of three sons and three daughters assembled at dinner' for his 70th birthday. He rejoiced each year that God spared him to share in this 'family blessing' at his birthday. James often had Fanny and her eleven children over to dinner and frequently breakfasted with his sons. On 28 November 1874 he was delighted that his sons joined him for dinner with eighteen children and grandchildren, 'making a good round table'. He also regularly took his grandchildren on enjoyable outings, offering evidence that grandchildren could be a significant part of a contented old age in the 1870s, if people survived long enough.4

James Henty's religious faith came a close second in importance to his family, and the two were closely linked. On Sundays he usually walked with his daughters Emily and Mary to church when he was well enough, though he was often obliged to worship at home. When perplexed in his difficult relations with James Balfour he sought guidance from God, whom he praised for His mercies and blessings on each birthday. In 1879 and 1880 James Henty remarked on the progress of his spiritual preparation for death, with reference also to earthly responsibilities: 'God is composing my pathway... Heavenly Father I leave all who belong to me to Thee... Hide them... until earthly calamities are past.' On his 78th birthday he noted, 'With my Redeemer at my side I cannot dread to die'. Two years later, on his 80th birthday in September 1880, he thanked God for years of blessings throughout an eventful life:

Lord grant that the approach of Eternity may lead me to greater diligence in Thy service. May I spend each day as if it were to be my last and nearer a dying hour may it find me nearer heaven... I leave my dear children... to Thee.5

James Henty was also sustained to the age of eighty by his continuing commitment to his professional life, with no thought of retirement until serious infirmity left him no choice. There are frequent references in his diaries to his work in the Legislative Council in his seventies. On 17 October 1871 he noted, 'to council till 6.30. Higginbotham under examination for 2 hrs on railways'. By 1874 ill-health forced him to reduce his Council hours, though he still attended significant debates, as on 15 December 1874 when he spoke on payment of members. Many times James forced himself to stay on, even for late sittings. By 1879 he increasingly noted 'weakness prevents my going to Council today which I regret'. His 80th birthday in September 1880 prompted his first reference to his possible retirement as a Director of the State Savings Bank. Despite encouragement to continue, James finally resigned in December 1880. He also maintained a serious interest in business, foreign affairs, shipping and sport to his death.6

Yet for many years James Henty suffered from severe ill-health which he bore with stoicism and determination, in the certainty that it was God's will. In the early 1870s his infirmity was intermittent, permitting him to record a busy life for months at a time, though he was inclined to overdo his commitments. Initially there were occasional references to rheumatism, sciatica and severe pain in the back and leg, making movement painful. In December 1870 his rheumatism and sciatica had 'a depressing effect on my spirits and nervous system'. By 1874 rheumatism often left him 'weak and helpless', so he thanked God whenever he was able to walk to church with his daughters. Five years later Henty was more often confined to the house with severe pain, and could not bear the jolting of the carriage along Flinders Street. On 20 October 1879 severe pain quite incapacitated him, 'excessive weakness rendering me liable to fall at any moment'. He began to take opium pills and Dr Dowling's rhubarb pills to relieve severe pain when 'the active state of business' required attention in town.7

But by December 1879 the weakness and pain caused by sciatica and lumbago was so disabling he required crutches to walk. The effort of attending Council was increasingly 'more than I can well bear'. By late 1880 he suffered awkward falls and was even more helpless, reporting for the first time that he was 'greatly depressed in spirits'.8 There was no planning for old age, as if for retirement and a different stage of life, as there might be today. In part, this was the product of an assumption that people would be dead before seventy years of age. In James Henty's case, it was also the consequence of a continuing reputation and engagement as businessman and politician, and a profound faith which left the matter of death up to God. Henty died in Melbourne in 1882.

### Reynell Johns (1834–1910)

Like Henty, Reynell Johns' experience of old age was undermined by serious ill-health, yet strengthened by the support of a large loving family. But there were also major differences: Reynell Johns lacked Henty's strong character and determination to fight against ill-health, and John's religious faith was more private and taken for granted. Reynell Johns followed a career in the public service, finally becoming police magistrate, coroner and warden of the goldfields. His real interest, however, was in natural history, anthropology and Aboriginal culture, as an educated amateur. Reynell Johns was a major collector of Aboriginal material culture in Victoria, and donated a large collection of Aboriginal artefacts to the Burke Memorial Museum in Beechworth on his death. He also kept very detailed diaries for fifty-five years, though these were not reflective—more often lists of incidents, appointments and ailments.9

Reynell Johns seems to have been a reserved man, who evidently did not promote himself in the public service, perhaps reserving his enthusiasm for his collection of Aboriginal artefacts. He settled with his family in Hamilton, in the Western District of Victoria, in 1890. He spent the last twenty years of his life there, though he survived for only six years after retirement in 1903. Apart from references to tiredness when travelling on court duties Reynell did not mention ill-health in his diaries until after his retirement. In August 1903 he received notice to retire on his pension on his 69th birthday, despite requests for an extension on financial grounds, reinforced by his concern that retirement meant 'idleness'. On 1 October 1903 Reynell noted in his diary: 'My first day out of harness. Made up my return and account... wound up my business at the Court House.' He was pleased by the 'kind flattering addresses' from Petty Sessions staff at Portland, and by 'kind farewells' elsewhere as he held final sessions in various courts.10

Reynell Johns had been active and apparently successful in the course of his life and career. He had five children, and his three daughters were still at home in 1903, until Nell's subsequent move to Melbourne on marriage. His family was supportive and socially active in the community, with frequent visitors, and domestic help in the house to make life comfortable. But Reynell Johns' retirement was severely marred by the death of his much younger wife, Alice, within a year. Alice had an accident in a horse-drawn vehicle in September 1903, arriving home 'in a state of collapse from the excitement acting on the heart', and was taken to hospital. Next day Alice was pronounced out of danger but a series of 'fainting fits' followed (which were doubtless heart attacks), though the family continued to hope her heart would not be permanently damaged.11

The accident took place on the day that Reynell Johns finally learned that his court extension was denied, which increased his difficulty in adjusting to life 'out of harness'. On 8 October 1903 he weeded the garden and did some odd jobs but was 'awfully tired'. Next day followed the same pattern: 'I am in good health but terribly weak. At this rate, I shan't last as long as I'm wanted.' Two days later he cleaned the fowl house and tried to relay the brick floor: 'to my disgust I found that the old ulcer has broken out again.' From late 1903 Reynell complained intermittently of serious pain, ulcers and carbuncles, but he was not diagnosed with heart disease, like his wife, until 1906. He had frequently reported general weakness, backache, tiredness, and ulcers in the months leading up to his wife's death, which undoubtedly increased his stress and his symptoms. Instead of working on his collection of Aboriginal artefacts and his garden, he often needed to recline on the couch and sleep during the day.12

Alice Johns died in September 1904, a year after her accident, at the early age of forty-eight, following a series of heart attacks. Reynell felt guilty that Alice's final attack might have been precipitated by his reprimand about 'something that had displeased me'. She died just a week after Reynell's 70th birthday. Alice had been 'coughing strangely' during the night, before they heard the 'dreaded rattle in her throat'. A mustard plaster and injection of strychnine into her arm and chest were of no avail, while Dr Laidlaw arrived too late. Reynell noted: 'my darling had passed away... Thank God it is I who have to bear the burden of solitude!' He was grateful that her last day was happy, spent chatting to visitors and playing cards. As the hospital matron laid Alice's body out, Reynell noted, 'may God help our children and me'. Visitors came to pay their last respects, while he arranged the funeral with the vicar, and the family assembled: 'Alice's death is a public misfortune and sorrow.'13

Reynell Johns died five and half years later in 1910, following years of serious ill-health both for himself and his daughter May, whose illness began on the day of her mother's death. In January 1905 Dr Laidlaw diagnosed May's complaint as neurasthenia and general depression; prolonged grief on her beloved mother's death was undoubtedly a major contributor. At least daughter Nell's wedding in October 1905 provided some respite from the gloom, and the two sons were doing well: Arthur passed his first actuarial exam, and Harold returned to Calcutta as an engineer. Meanwhile Reynell Johns thanked God for his remaining family, glad to have his daughters May and Clare at home with him most of the time. Reynell worked in his garden and in his home 'museum' when health permitted, and gathered together 'many relics of the happy past'. He spent increasing time on the lounge because of weakness, neck carbuncles and an ulcerated leg, though on better days he exhibited his treasured Aboriginal collection to friends.14

In July 1906 Dr Laidlaw pronounced Reynell Johns' heart and kidneys weak and disordered, prescribing careful living, a strict regimen, and bed rest. May was ill again in September, possibly worn out from looking after her father: her sister Clare was now enlisted to assist with housework, cooking and care of both invalids. By the end of 1906 Reynell felt well enough to re-arrange the specimens in his beloved collection, but Dr Laidlaw ordered him to work no more: 'it's hard but my business is to live as long as my children need me and I'll try!' So he received visitors, rested, wrote letters, and looked over his papers. In September 1907 Reynell observed that he would care little about his impending death if his children were better cared for, 'as I hope to meet as many dear ones in the next state as I leave behind in this'. This was a rare reference to a sincere religious faith he took for granted; yet the belief in family reunion in heaven was vital in reconciling him to his own death, as to his wife's.15

In 1908 May was in hospital in Melbourne for an unspecified operation, while a nurse and the live-in maids cared for Reynell Johns, whose heart was more unsteady. On New Years' Day 1909 Reynell noted, 'I leave much, but go to more'. In between 'bad turns' he was sorting letters and papers, thinking of his wife in heaven, and occasionally exhibiting his Aboriginal collection to visitors. Reynell died on 20 May 1910 aged seventy-five, wishing his daughters were better provided for and May was not so sick. For him old age was dominated by his wife's death and his own ill-health. It was made tolerable by the loving support of his daughters, his faith in family reunions in heaven, his sustained interest in his collection, and the help of nurses and servants.16

### Edward John White (1831–1913)

The impact of the 1890s economic depression in Australia on the working classes and the poor was catastrophic. It also severely affected the professional, business and landed classes, as it reversed the economic boom of the 1880s. Economic activity and foreign credit contracted dramatically after 1891 and ushered in a grim period of massive unemployment, population decline and falling wool prices. British depositors withdrew funds from colonial banks and confidence slumped. Between April and May 1893 many banks closed or suspended business, creating economic and political chaos.17 Historian Bev Kingston has observed: 'Savings disappeared. Business and personal failure was widespread. Employment levels reached their lowest point by about 1896... There were many moves and broken families.'18 Victoria, suffered more than other colonies in the depression of the 1890s, with worse unemployment than New South Wales, having enjoyed the most impressive boom in the previous decade.

Edward John White's diary illuminates the effect of the 1890s depression on a member of the Melbourne scientific intelligentsia who was aged over sixty. Edward White was born in Bristol, England, where he trained as a mechanical engineer. He emigrated to Victoria in 1853, married Kate L'Oste ten years later and they had a large family of ten children. For many years he was Chief Assistant at the Government Observatory in Melbourne, until forced to retire in 1892. Edward was also President of the Royal Society of Victoria from 1902–3 and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.19 He was unusually disciplined in both his working life and his retirement, keeping a detailed record of his times of rising (usually around 6 am), times of arrival at the Observatory, newspapers and books read each day, scientific meetings attended and the numerous visitors at home.

Edward White's diary is thus exceptionally revealing of his daily routine from the age of sixty in December 1891 to his death in 1913 (aged eighty-one). Despite his ordeal during the economic depression of the 1890s he enjoyed a remarkably good old age, with excellent health, a supportive wife and family, a positive approach to adversity, and sustained intellectual and scientific interests. In one major respect White differed from the two earlier diarists: though he read the bible occasionally, his interest was intellectual, for he rarely attended church and made no mention of spiritual beliefs. Edward was a careful financial manager who looked after his interests during the financial crash with determination and precision. He succeeded in maintaining sufficient savings and investments to preserve a comfortable middle-class environment for his large family of ten. Like James Henty, he was just as methodical and determined about his time and occupation in retirement as he had been while still formally employed, in marked contrast to Reynell Johns.

Early in 1892 Edward White noted company failures, some of which affected him financially, but he never recorded emotional responses such as distress or anxiety, leaving actions to suggest feelings. His personal occupational crisis commenced on 30 June 1892 at the age of sixty when he saw a shocking notice in the _Age_ 'that the services of the Sexagenarians Messrs Ellery, White and Moerlin were to be retained [only] till the Observatory was reorganized'. Edward made no further comment in that day's diary, though he had been expecting to continue in his position in normal circumstances, perhaps to the age of seventy.20 By 1892 sharply falling revenues obliged the Victorian government to undertake substantial retrenchments, including reduction in public service salaries and compulsory retirement of public servants over sixty. This was done in the context of a radical structural reform of the Public Service.21 Two weeks later, on 14 July 1892, Edward was informed that the Government intended to obtain an order in council calling on him and others to retire from the Government Observatory in late September. He was, however, permitted to retain his quarters at the Observatory for voluntary unpaid work following retirement.22

On 30 September 1892 Edward White's 'official connection' with the Observatory ended after thirty-two years' service, though remarkably the Observatory expected him to work informally without pay for three months. Understandably, he had serious grievances about what he termed 'the affair of my pension', claiming continued pay for the additional three months' work. Edward also argued that the government only paid his pension on the basis of the net cash he received, which did not include the £50 rent for his quarters, which had been deducted from his salary of £650. White fought a sustained campaign over the next year to persuade the government to grant him justice. He twice put his case personally before T.R. Wilson, the Undersecretary of the Public Service, in October 1892. Edward also placed his claims before Mr Joske at the Civil Servants' Association, and wrote two letters of protest to his MP, Joseph Harris, MLA. But in November 1892 he was advised that the Audit Commission had decided the issue against him.23

Edward White was angered at his unjust treatment and quietly determined to win his point. In December 1892 he put his case in a strong letter to the Chief Secretary of the Public Service and visited Parliament House to discuss it personally with his MP, Joseph Harris. On 20 January 1893 while on holiday with his family at Sorrento, he noted in his diary: 'read yesterday's _Argus_ which contained my letter and a leader about my unjust treatment by the Government'. Edward had indeed taken his case for justice to a more popular level. He also lobbied James Service, leader of the Public Service reform movement, but Service responded regretfully that the deplorable condition of government finances precluded justice regarding his pension. Edward persisted with a personal meeting with Service but the timing was inauspicious, as in April 1893 several major trading banks collapsed after a run by depositors. The following month T.R. Wilson, as Undersecretary, confirmed the government's refusal to recognise his claim for full pay for his three months' work from July to September 1892.24

Edward White quietly persisted with his letters and his lobbying through the dark days of 1893 and 1894, including further letters to the press. In June 1895 he authorised an attorney to act in the final stages of the matter of his pension, which was at last successful. The government had finally decided to accept the judges' decision in favour of payment for the three months' work in 1892. Edward was formally advised in October 1895 that an Order in Council decreed that his pension should be calculated on his full salary, including his £50 rent. On 11 October 1895 he at last received his September pension on the scale of his full salary, together with the arrears of £77.15.6 for underpayment on his net pension for the previous three years.25 This was triumph, indeed, after years of persistent effort, though characteristically there was no mention in his diary of celebration.

While the campaign for justice over his pension had been in process, Edward White was also occupied in his efforts to retrieve as much as possible from the financial crash. On 1 May 1893 he was concerned at the _Age_ 's statement that the National Bank was obliged to succumb, as he had 150 shares. On walking through town there was 'great excitement over the closing of the banks and the Government proclamation of a bank Holiday till Saturday'. Edward carefully listed in his diary his many visits to banks and to the offices of liquidators, noting his gains and his far greater losses over the next three years.26 The impact of being forced to retire at the start of a severe economic depression was a serious blow. Clearly his persistent efforts helped to minimise his substantial losses, but he must have been very anxious for several years, since his large family still included several dependent children.

Despite Edward White's serious financial concerns, he maintained an active routine in retirement as an energetic walker and gardener almost every day. He continued to spend two or three hours working at the Observatory as a volunteer most days and maintained his scientific discussions with former colleagues. Edward spent substantial time reading newspapers and serious books in the public library, such as a history of the goldfields and Macaulay's _History of England_. He often visited town with his supportive wife Kate or one of his daughters, had a wide circle of friends, and attended many scientific meetings, frequently in a leadership capacity.27 Such a heavy schedule was possible because his health was good, he was naturally determined and systematic, and he evidently required little sleep.

From about 1897, when he was sixty-six, Edward White's pace of life seemed to slow a little. He noted more details of family affairs in his diary, such as the death of his sister Fanny, hence 'my ties with the old country will now be very slender', followed by the marriage of his daughter Emily. In October 1897 Edward gave the first indication of physical frailty, with a reference to aching eyes, and the occasional 'nap after lunch'. In 1899 he bought spectacles for six shillings, and considered a trip to England as the financial situation was improving. Edward achieved this visit in 1900 when he went without his wife and family (presumably to limit the expense): he visited the 'Paris Exhibition', met other scientists, located his surviving family and toured the sights. The subsequent years at home continued with varied activities, following his scientific and financial interests, with no apparent illness.28

For the first time in January 1913 Dr Vance was called in several times, and by February Edward was seriously ill with heart disease. He examined his will on 4 April, his last diary entry was dated 28 April and he died on 2 August 1913 aged eighty-two.29 Despite the impact of the severe depression of the 1890s Edward enjoyed a remarkably good old age, with most major variables working in his favour, especially health, family, class, personality, financial means, and occupational interests.

### Dr John Springthorpe (1855–1933)

John William Springthorpe was a distinguished Melbourne physician and public intellectual who often took a controversial stand on important medical and social topics. He was a brilliant student at the University of Melbourne and was recognised as the first Australian member of the Royal College of Physicians in Britain. In 1887 he became in-patient physician at the Melbourne Hospital and a University of Melbourne lecturer. John Springthorpe also published an impressive textbook in 1914, _Therapeutics, Dietetics, and Hygiene_ , as well as numerous articles for medical journals. He excelled in leadership roles in the medical profession, including the presidency of the Melbourne Medical Association in 1900. He was Official Visitor to the Lunacy Department for many years, and became an active, if sometimes controversial advocate for people with a mental or intellectual handicap and for lunacy reform. He also ran a thriving medical practice in Collins Street up to 1914. Dr Felix Meyer wrote of him:

Throughout his career, independent thought and action and outspoken criticism were marked characteristics. With this independent spirit went a tenacity of purpose which made him formidable to those who did not see eye to eye with him... Anything like an abuse or misuse of authority roused his fighting spirit, and having espoused a cause, he threw himself wholeheartedly into it. He had great humanity; the pain and suffering of others touched him and moved him to action.30

John Springthorpe was a remarkable man of endless energy, far-reaching ambition and wide-ranging interests, including his Christian faith, Australian politics, and his impressive collection of paintings and sculpture.

In 1887 John Springthorpe married Annie Inglis, a beautiful young heiress, who died in childbirth ten years later, leaving three children, Enid, Lance and Guy. Springthorpe was devastated by Annie's tragic death and poured out his grief in four extraordinary volumes of his diary. He was determined that his wife's memory should live on, but traditional forms of commemoration proved inadequate for him, 'leaving an aching void'. He needed a more creative and challenging mode of permanent memorial for Annie—a magnificent tomb which would be 'a lifelong task in its care and attention, something that will continue to bind me to Her it commemorates so long as I live'. He commissioned the renowned sculptor Bertram Mackennal to design a magnificent white marble mausoleum at Boroondara Cemetery, Kew, as 'an apotheosis of love for all true lovers to the end of Time'. The _Age_ obituary of John Springthorpe in 1933 deemed the memorial 'one of the most beautiful and most costly in the Commonwealth', which finally cost about £5400, several times the original estimate. The creation of the tomb enabled him to work through his grief, though he mourned his dead wife intensely for many years, and finally remarried in 1916.31

The story of John Springthorpe's 'magnificent obsession' in his forties illuminates his remarkable character, drive and ambition, which was to be reflected again in his management of old age. But his brilliance, reforming zeal, and extraordinary energies could make enemies, as in the Great War. In 1914 he was sufficiently altruistic and dedicated to enlist in the Australian Army Medical Corps at the advanced age of fifty-nine, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, when many younger doctors chose an easier and more remunerative life in Australia. He served as senior physician to the Second Australian General Hospital in Egypt, France and England, where he developed a passionate interest in the management of war neuroses, especially shell shock. He was sharply critical of what he saw as mismanagement and confusion, resenting autocratic officialdom which failed to use his talents wisely.32

On New Years' Day in 1927, at the age of seventy-one, John Springthorpe reflected on his achievements and his response to the lack of reward and recognition for his work:

I feel I have been privileged to do a great deal but it has been done without rather than with official cooperation, even against much official muddling and never sparing grave faults as they seemed to me. So, wafted on my own course and in opposition rather than combination, I am, naturally, out of all official running. And as it never entered into my reckoning, recognition i.e. Official is outside my orbit. Does it matter? Not a scintilla.33

But of course it did matter. On return to Australia in 1919 John had been close to bitterness at times that he failed to receive due recognition for his contribution to the war effort. Moreover, at the age of sixty-three, he returned to find that more junior and less gifted doctors had advanced in their careers in his five years' absence: his hospital and university appointments had lapsed and were not renewed, while his former patients had moved elsewhere. Other medical specialists had prospered in his absence while he was on meagre wartime pay: he had returned to civilian life '£10,000 out of pocket'.34 (This may be placed in the context of his earlier lifestyle, which allowed him to spend £5,400 on his wife's tomb). He remained anxious about his financial position for the rest of his life.

Far from returning from war with public honour and gratitude, John Springthorpe feared he might be consigned to near oblivion, especially as his age of sixty-five in 1921 marked him out as close to retirement. He commenced his diary again in 1921 after several years' lapse, noting that he was 'only now feeling like renewing self communion and recording'. His earlier diaries had often been avowedly introspective, a reflection of his 'inner life', as after Annie's death. In his new diary, early in 1921, he analysed as objectively as possible the positive and negative aspects of his new civilian situation at the age of sixty-five. Clearly he did not yet regard himself as elderly. He believed his acute intelligence, varied interests and passionate temperament were unimpaired; his health was excellent, apart from loss of sight in the left eye and poor hearing: 'otherwise unusually good for my age and with a BP [blood pressure] of only 140!' Indeed 'I feel a new being, better stronger physically mentally and morally', than when he left for the war six years earlier.35

John Springthorpe's positive column in his balance sheet of older age highlighted the support of his family, especially his second wife, Daisie Evelyn Johnson, a nurse, whom he married in 1916. She was 'self sacrifice, devotion personified', and loved by all who knew her. John was proud of his children, Enid, Lance and Guy, and enjoyed a powerful bond with them. He loved and cared for his beautiful home, 'Joyous Gard' in Murrumbeena, with his impressive art collection and magnificent garden admired by all. John believed, with some justification, that his house and gardens were among the best in Melbourne, and they occupied an enjoyable and active part of most days. He planned that, if he ever had the money, he would take Daisie for a trip round the world, 'make a dream of Joyous Gard', and write a book about the Great War.36

High on the debit side of John Springthorpe's balance sheet was his £10,000 out of pocket because of the war. He was obliged to earn his daily bread at the age of sixty-five, so he and Daisie went out rarely and took no regular holidays. In 1921 he was living up to his income, if not beyond it, because of the expenditure required to maintain his imposing house and estate.37 A major contribution to his financial woes was his inability to rebuild his once flourishing private medical practice: he was unpopular with the medical establishment, while doctors who stayed at home during the war had taken his patients. On 10 February 1921 John lamented the decline in his medical practice: 'those who stayed reaped the harvest and own the farm.' He recognised that to others, patients as well as doctors, he was, at sixty-five, seen as a veteran, despite his good health and distinguished reputation. 'As at the war I win no medal, get no promotion.' Instead of wallowing in regrets, he threw his still abundant energies into the promotion of the Plunket Training School for infant welfare nurses and the health of mothers and infants. He also resumed his post of visitor to metropolitan asylums and worked for repatriation, as well as becoming a regular contributor to Melbourne newspapers.38 He was a well-known public intellectual in Melbourne and champion of reforms in mental health and child welfare. Most people at sixty-five—or even fifty-five—in 1921 would have been well satisfied with such a workload.

In 1921 John Springthorpe also contemplated death and the diseases of old age, in a philosophical manner unusual in a man of sixty-five who was still in good health. Indeed he devoted more thought to impending death than the other four diarists, except for James Henty—though Henty's focus was spiritual whereas Springthorpe's was primarily physical. As a young man the prospect of death had been 'a dreadful even hideous thought', but his loss of Annie led John to regard death 'not as a cessation of being but an alteration'. He had learned that it was wise and necessary to leave death to God to determine: 'any terror thus of Death, and I used to have it overpoweringly, vanishes.' But the process of dying was inevitably a matter of great concern to a physician familiar with the many medical causes of death:

Constantly seeing the manifold ways in which individuals degenerate, cancer, senile debility, mental as well as physical, dementia, arteriosclerosis with thrombosis and rupture, heart failure, kidney, stomach, liver and all other organic trouble, all, no doubt, with reason, but many without any apparent special individual cause, and one wonders how one's declining years will go. Most of my contemporaries and nearly all my elders, have gone or are failing, and the picture of their slow descent is not a nice or attractive one. Few have 'a green old age' pleasant and kindly and who can say that there has been or must be payment according to deserts. Whither am I? Hitherto one of fortune's favourites. Why should I be lucky to the end?39

John could only be philosophical about this terrifying list by aiming to keep fit and pursue useful interests while health allowed. But he understood that 'brains last to the end, though the body fails', and if necessary he could retreat from the world of action to the realm of contemplation. 'Let me accept it philosophically as natural and so tolerable.' He believed in a Supreme Being, so terror of Death evaporated. He delighted in contemplating nature, art, literature, the sky, 'and so hold commune with many minds'. He claimed the war had taught him the folly of ambition.40

In 1926 at the age of seventy-one John Springthorpe remained determined to take Daisie on his retirement dream of a long visit 'home', to England, where he was born. The prospect seemed remote when his three children were unable to offer the financial assistance he so badly needed. Indeed, John was required to support Guy's postgraduate medical studies, and to help Enid's husband through bankruptcy proceedings. Finally he was obliged to sell his Collins Street property and some land to finance his children and his own goal of eighteen months in England and a month's Mediterranean cruise.41 John and Daisie explored the sights around England and Wales, Daisie was presented at Buckingham Palace, and they visited his parents' graves. John Springthorpe also devoted time in England to his medical interests, having been commissioned to report back on mental cases of value to the Repatriation Commission. At the request of the Victorian Government he also reported on the English-speaking conference on child welfare and maternity. His final comment on their long overseas visit was 'what has it not meant in the way of experience, enjoyment, reminiscence and promise'.42

On his return to Australia late in 1927 John Springthorpe recognized that, at the age of seventy-three, he had already been permitted more than the average years of life and 'beyond my deserts'. He knew of many people who had died while he and Daisie enjoyed themselves in Europe, some younger than he. He was acutely conscious that many people failed more rapidly after the age of seventy-three, but hoped for more years 'of sound health of mind and body'. John was concerned that after his death in a few years time he would soon be 'a forgotten name', except in Daisie's heart. In 1928 he saw many more old friends 'going downhill, many have disappeared'. The following year he at last recognised that he must 'ease off' as he was feeling the strain of his age and must confine himself to 'efforts within my purview'. By his 76th birthday in 1930 he still felt young, 'in many ways younger than ever', with no disability except middle ear deafness and lack of sight in one eye.43

Springthorpe worried continually in old age about the balance between his achievements and his failings, continually needing to justify himself, as on 6 June 1929:

I thought that the war had scotched the demon 'recognition by authority' but not unnaturally I suppose I don't like being passed over amongst the qualified by those who have done less. Yet, what else could be expected. I am afraid that deep down is not ambition, but the negative swing that there is something wrong with my methods, or my ploughing a lone furrow.

And yet he had chosen those methods because they achieved more: 'results are better than recognition.' He regretted in 1930, 'nothing doing professionally, living on my capital, but funds there for some time to come. So far failed to get paid work elsewhere, scarcely to be expected at 75!' Yet he was fortunate in having sold land and property at good prices.44 John usually concluded that his achievements exceeded his failings: indeed his contribution in old age must have surpassed that of many younger men. He continued to work for health education, lunacy reform and repatriation, when his private practice was declining. He was president of the Society for the Health of Women and Children, aiming to improve the health of mothers and babies, despite disagreements with other baby health organisations. Towards the end of his life John Springthorpe justly believed he could claim 'a keener delight in satisfying work, in self improvement and in public service than ever before, and on the whole, far more self-control and obedience to law!'45

John Springthorpe's final diary entry was dated 24 December 1930, though he did not die until 1933 at the age of seventy-six. Most of his days in 1930 were very busy, with meetings, numerous visitors, and hours spent in his beloved garden with Daisie: 'the garden, day by day getting closer to my heart and brain.' He continued with hours of serious reading and thinking, although he now allowed himself later breakfasts. He swam and enjoyed watching cricket, while often dreaming about another trip with Daisie back home to England. He also continually worried about reducing expenditure, and the problems of his three children.46

John Springthorpe also began to write that he was about to face 'the greatest adventure of all—the future without knowledge, but with hope'. He must 'face the unknown and limited future like a man... We have had our good times, now meet the bad as best we may'.47 John's last entries in December 1930 acknowledged that he was 'somewhat tired and despondent... I seem to be losing power.' He still felt 'keen and able' but it began to look as if 'my little day is done and going down the hill. Well it has been a great day, to me... In the midst of the battle apparently failing, but still fighting and aged 76! Why despair?'48 He was buried in 1933 in Boroondara cemetery, Kew, leaving an estate valued at £8280. His was a most remarkable experience of old age, the positive side of the balance sheet far exceeding the negative.

Overall, there is a marked contrast between the experiences of these men and the women of the same period, explored in the earlier chapter. Men and women were naturally both liable to suffer health problems, and were equally likely to enjoy the consolations of religion and the advantages of class. But most other variables favoured the men, especially in frail old age when they often had supportive wives and even unmarried daughters to care for them, as well as the satisfaction of successful careers and the lack of financial concerns.

### Notes

1 Laslett, p. 20; Martin, passim.

2 Bassett, passim.

3 Henty, James, Diary, 24 Nov. 1874, SLV, MS 10048.

4 ibid., Sept. 1870, 28 Nov. 1874.

5 ibid., 1879–80, 24 Sept. 1880.

6 ibid., 17 Oct. 1871; 15 Dec. 1874; 30 Sept., 9 Dec. 1879; Sept., Dec. 1880.

7 ibid., Dec. 1870, 19 Nov. 1874, 20 Oct. 1879.

8 ibid., Dec. 1879, Oct.–Dec. 1880.

9 Cooper, pp. 90–6.

10 Johns, Reynell, Diary, 1 Oct. 1903, MS 10075, SLV.

11 ibid., Sept. 1903.

12 ibid., Oct.–Dec. 1903.

13 ibid., Aug.–Sept. 1904.

14 ibid., 1905–6.

15 ibid., 1906–7.

16 ibid., 1908–10.

17 Lee, p. 183; Davison, _The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne_ , pp. 14, 215, 126–7.

18 Kingston, _The Oxford History of Australia_ , p. 45.

19 White, E.J., Diaries (biographical notes), SLV, MS 13122, box 3810/2.

20 ibid., 30 June 1892, vol. 6.

21 Davison, _The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne_ , pp. 127–8.

22 White, E. J., Diaries, 14 July 1892, SLV, MS 13122, box 3810/2, vol. 6.

23 ibid., 1892.

24 ibid., Dec. 1892; 20 Jan., April–May 1893.

25 ibid., 1893–5, box 3810/3, vol. 7.

26 ibid., 1 May 1893.

27 ibid., 1893–6.

28 ibid., 1897–Dec. 1912, box 3810/11, vols. 7–8.

29 ibid., Jan.–Aug. 1913.

30 Westmore, passim.

31 Jalland, _Australian Ways of Death_ , pp. 177–96.

32 ibid.

33 Springthorpe, J. W., Diaries, 1 Jan. 1927, SLV, MS 9898.

34 ibid., 25 Jan.; 2, 7, 10, 17–18, 22, 25 Feb. 1921.

35 ibid., 25 Jan.; 2, 10 Feb. 1921.

36 ibid., 3, 7 Feb. 1921.

37 ibid., 18, 22 Feb. 1921.

38 ibid., 3, 7 Feb. 1921.

39 ibid., 2, 18 Feb. 1921.

40 ibid., 7, 17, 25 Feb. 1921.

41 ibid., 5, 24 Feb., 23 Nov. 1926; 22 Feb.–22 Mar. 1927.

42 ibid., 10–12 July, 8 Nov. 1927.

43 ibid., 12 July, 8 Nov. 1927; 1 May 1928; 29–30 Aug. 1930.

44 ibid., 12 Mar., 3 Dec. 1930.

45 ibid., 4 June 1929.

46 ibid., 1930.

47 ibid., 24 Dec. 1929; 1 Mar., 3 May, 21 Sept. 1930.

48 ibid., 3, 16, 24 Dec. 1930.

## 4

## The 'Forgotten People': Poverty, War and Depression, 1914–1945

Relatively few records of old people's experiences in Australia exist before the 1950s, but these sources can be surprisingly revealing. This chapter analyses three case studies of the poverty, misery and prejudice which afflicted elderly working class people and pensioners in Victoria and New South Wales between 1914 and 1945. First, in 1928 contemporary newspapers revealed the scandals of the two huge destitute asylums in Sydney, which illuminate the failure to transform nineteenth-century institutions into modern hospitals, with hundreds of old people still on long waiting lists. Secondly, the records of the influential Charity Organisation Society (COS) in Victoria provide a substantial repository of individual applications for minimal funds to prevent abject destitution. The third major source on the plight of poor old people is the Pensioners Association of Victoria's journal, _The Pensioner_ , which was published from 1933 to 1936. The campaign leaders fought in vain to unite pensioners to force the federal government to reverse reductions in aged pensions during the Great Depression. This journal also illuminates other aspects of pensioners' fragile existence during severe economic depression.

Elderly poor people in Australia rarely found their way into the history books—or even the newspapers—between 1914 and 1939. This was a period of rapid increase in the number of those over the age of sixty-five, but they were overlooked in times of war and economic depression. Looking back from the later 1940s, the press sometimes described old people living in this tough period of history as 'the forgotten people'. As Stuart Macintyre notes, 'by 1931 the unions were powerless, the ALP was routed and a large proportion of the population reduced to helpless indigence'. Between 1930 and 1934 about 20 per cent of wage earners were unemployed, peaking at 30 per cent in 1932,1 and charities and relief agencies were overwhelmed.

Moreover, in the interwar years pride deterred some unemployed men over sixty-five from seeking the age pension, still regarded by some more as a charity than a right, especially in Victoria. Men in their sixties in the inter-war years, especially those involved in labouring jobs, often had health problems which reduced their re-employment prospects. They were physically more like men in their seventies and eighties today. Some older men had to continue working as long as possible, until the onset of unemployment or frail health. This was understandable give the pitiful level of the aged pension, especially in the 1930s. Yet some older men still refused the age pension, even in an emergency, and others rejected the benevolent asylum, except in desperation.

### 'Grave Scandals' at Sydney's Asylums for the Elderly in 1928

Forty years after the scandal at Newington Asylum for Women, explored in Chapter 1, Newington was seemingly little changed in 1928, and still attracting headlines in the press such as 'Grave Scandal' and 'Horrors of Newington'. The original Newington Asylum for elderly destitute women was opened in the 1880s, at one-third of the government's cost of hospital treatment. The successive New South Wales state governments were not prepared to spend money to reform Newington Asylum after the serious 1887 scandal. But with the development of modern medical science, early attempts were made from 1913 to transform such asylums into hospitals, with medical standards and classification. Control of Newington and Rookwood Asylums was transferred from the Department of Charitable Institutions to that of Public Health in 1913, when Newington became a 'State Hospital and Asylum for Women'. But the timing of this reform was unfortunate. Two world wars and economic depression caused severe shortages of the manpower and money required to transform nineteenth-century asylums into modern hospitals.

In January 1918 Newington State Hospital and Asylum for Women held 700 'inmates' including 300 in the hospital division, with a mortality of about 14.5 per cent per year. The _Medical Journal of Australia_ commented in 1920 that the sad condition of many elderly patients was still due to 'social defects' and alcoholism rather than the failure of medical treatment.2 Equally worrying was the _Sydney Morning Herald_ 's comment in 1922 that Newington was already vastly overcrowded, with more than two hundred frail and disabled elderly women awaiting admission. Nor was there any refuge for hundreds of blind old women without relatives who were unable to care for themselves.3 These huge waiting lists for such a bleak and overcrowded asylum in the interwar years speak volumes about the pitiful conditions of the elderly poor in the external community.

Shocking revelations in the _Sydney Morning Herald_ in March 1928 were provoked by hospital inspections. By then Newington was intended to be as much a hospital as an asylum, with 250 of 680 inmates in hospital wards, yet the matron had only thirty nurses. Newington had been seriously understaffed for twenty years, with frequent staff resignations due to appalling conditions. The _Herald_ noted that classification of patients was essential for self-respect, but they were all thrown together 'higgledy-piggledy', and respectable former teachers were placed with thieves and drunkards. Acute general hospitals refused to take chronic older patients who might require long-term beds, and instead moved them out to Newington, where many patients occupied the same beds for years: 'On one verandah, women in advanced stages of tuberculosis sleep out with women suffering from no contagious diseases.'4 But the _Herald_ conceded that the few staff did their best to make deplorable conditions bearable: the inmates were victims of political neglect and lack of government funding, not staff abuse as was found in the 1880s.

On 27 May 1928, even _Truth_ —usually ready to elaborate on a scandal—agreed that the 'horrors of Newington' were not the fault of the administration or nursing staff. Indeed, everything was wrong at Newington except the staff, who could only be mere drudges when thirty nurses looked after 600 patients. The present and past governments were entirely responsible for the rotten state of affairs, by starving Newington and other hospitals of funds. Newington was 'disgustingly overcrowded... filth, darkness and dankness' were ubiquitous. The kitchen was a disgrace to the state, while people with dreadful diseases died on dirty mattresses that had been re-used without sterilisation. Patients were seen as human husks, stricken by paralysis or senile decay, packed side by side on stretchers on the floor. Old women still able to walk were obliged to push heavy laundry baskets up steep tracks for a miserable pittance. Many were past caring and saw life as one long injustice. A commission was needed to inquire into the conditions of state hospitals so badly starved of funds.5

This blast from the press evoked several responses in 1928. Dr Wall, MLC, made two strong speeches in the Legislative Assembly in late May, condemning the 'grave public scandal' and challenging the government to establish an independent, isolated institution for cancer, tuberculosis and epilepsy patients. It was deplorable that frail elderly inmates had to work 'like galley slaves' though they were often 'decrepit, semi-imbecile, uncouth women'. Dr Wall acknowledged the work of the hospital would be impossible without the labour of such 'semi-imbeciles' working seven days a week, since there was a staff of only one matron and thirty nurses.6 In October 1928 a deputation from the Country Women's Association protested to Dr Arthur, the Minister for Health, who had so far remained silent. The women alleged that the prisoners in Long Bay gaol were treated better than the old women at Newington: Mrs Mathias commented that she would prefer to commit suicide rather than be railroaded into the asylum. Dr Arthur merely agreed to investigate, reminding the delegation of the tight economic constraints.7

Rookwood Asylum was founded in 1892 as the main institution for poor elderly men, to cope with massive overcrowding in the other asylums due to severe economic decline. A new reform era was supposed to commence in 1913 but the transformation into a modern hospital was delayed for decades by two world wars and the Great Depression. As at Newington Hospital and Asylum for Women, chronic elderly medical cases were unloaded by overburdened general hospitals to the grim asylum overlooking Rookwood Cemetery. During the First World War the pressures of overcrowding and understaffing intensified as the 'volunteer' labour of elderly inmates became even more vital. By 1920 Rookwood was massively overcrowded with 1371 inmates—including 628 hospital patients and 743 asylum inmates—with a mortality of 21 per cent for the year. Two wards held 137 patients with epilepsy or mental disorders, and two tents contained many patients with tuberculosis.8

In January 1928 the _Sydney Morning Herald_ and _Truth_ reported on inquest evidence concerning the suicide of an alcoholic man in the so-called epileptic ward at 'Lidcombe' Asylum. Its name had recently been changed from Rookwood in an ineffective effort to overcome the association with the famous cemetery next door. A few days later the _Herald_ published a leader article with a banner headline: 'Pitiful Scenes. Cruel Conditions. Atmosphere of Misery.'

Hundreds of old men are herded together, human flotsam, with insufficient attention, shocking accommodation and unsuitable buildings. The wards are filled with old men, weak, sick, tortured, dying. The grounds are dotted with others depressingly rubbing their hands in the sun or with their heads buried in their hands, unhappy, despondent, and alone. Melancholy scenes.

Lidcombe Asylum was a terrible place in which to spend the last years of old age. The hopeless outlook for inmates was expressed in 'sighs and groans, black staring eyes, and a brooding silence'. The asylum was sadly reminiscent of the 'unwholesome traditions' of a nineteenth-century workhouse, which indeed was its origin. The tubercular ward had 'a gloomy prospect over the glistening headstones of Rookwood Cemetery, forever reminding them of their fate in the near future'.9

The _Sydney Morning Herald_ noted that one thousand of the 1500 inmates were supposedly hospital patients, but there were only three doctors and 'a harried and meagre' support staff. The worst medical division was that of senile dementia, containing 160 mentally deficient and paralysed men, including thirty lying helpless on mattresses on the floor between beds. These 'immovable and helpless' men needed constant attention, but they lay there day and night in nightmare surroundings, inadequately cared for by three attendants instead of the necessary sixteen. This represented 'cruel callous treatment' of the state's impoverished and vulnerable old men, in conditions which would have been shocking fifty years earlier. On average, two men died each day and hundreds from outside the asylum clamoured to replace them, in desperate need of food and shelter, irrespective of the appalling conditions inside. Indeed there would soon be a winter influx of hungry homeless men, worn out and indigent, without friends and family to care for them. However, all acknowledged that the Lidcombe staff did their best, despite intolerable conditions.10

These shocking press revelations forced Dr Arthur, as Minister for Health, to investigate conditions and take steps to relieve the crisis. During 1928 the tubercular patients were transferred to Randwick and Waterfall Hospitals, while the vacated wards were renovated to accommodate epileptic patients. Seven fully trained nurses and fifteen attendants were appointed in January 1929.11 However, funding was completely inadequate to accommodate the increasing demands on Lidcombe during the economic depression of the 1930s. The practice of shifting numerous chronic cases from general hospitals to Lidcombe continued, and there were always desperate old men needing beds and food. From the mid-1930s Lidcombe also took over inmates from the former asylums at Macquarie Street and George Street. By 1938 the total numbers at Lidcombe had increased to 1895, with 985 in the hospital and 910 in the 'home'. The hospital still aimed to become a modern medical institution, but inevitably it continued to be vastly overcrowded with inadequate medical staff. The Second World War and its shortages of staff and funding made a challenging situation far worse. Serious reform and modernisation of Lidcombe Asylum had to wait until the 1960s.

### The Charity Organisation Society: Welfare for the Deserving in Victoria

The extensive case files of the influential Charity Organisation Society (COS) in Melbourne illuminate the trials of the individual poor old people in urgent need of help in both the interwar years and during the war. The COS in Melbourne was modelled on its English parent organisation, and pursued 'scientific' case work which discriminated between supposedly 'deserving' applicants and dependent 'cadgers'. The Society also tried to ensure that no applicant received assistance in money or kind from more than one welfare organisation to prevent duplication, especially as subscription levels to charities sank in the interwar years. After interviewing applicants COS case enquiry officers visited their families and neighbours, checking their stories of problems and their finances. The officers were often intrusive, noting whether applicants appeared clean and appreciated their lowly position, or seemed untrustworthy, dirty and undeserving. The COS case enquiry officers were often judgemental in classifying the 'deserving' poor; but even they were sometimes affected by the sheer misery of old people in abject poverty, through no fault of their own. The dual impact of ageing and economic hardship could affect many older people. But those who appeared to have a 'respectable' background had more chance of receiving assistance. Indiscriminate charity was thought to encourage the least deserving, and applicants only contacted the COS when they were desperate.12

Joseph L.,13 aged 65, and his wife Elizabeth, were almost ideal COS applicants in the 1920s; theirs was an unusual story with an excellent outcome. Joseph was a clerk and store assistant who had been retrenched from Stillidays store in Mildura in 1921. Having failed for several months to obtain another job in Melbourne, he sought help from the COS in seeking employment. He and his wife rented two rooms in Hawthorn at fifteen shillings weekly, with their four sons each contributing five shillings weekly when possible. The case enquiry officer was favourably impressed by Mrs L., 'a very nice woman' who aimed to take in sewing to earn money. The COS Secretary concluded that at age sixty-five Joseph L.'s employment prospects were remote but, since he 'seemed to be a decent type of man', the COS would suggest he apply for the age pension. With his wife's prospective earnings from needlework, this should 'at least suffice to keep them from actual want'.14

Joseph L. and his wife reappeared in the COS files in March 1924, reduced to renting just one room in Hawthorn at ten shillings weekly as they could no longer afford two rooms. He was still anxious to find caretaking work, to no avail, and his wife's sewing brought in vital though meagre funds. He asked the COS to pay him up to £1 for a pair of boots as his own were entirely worn out; both now received the old age pension, but their total income of £2.4.0 per week did not allow for extras. Joseph L. also sought £1 to purchase necessary clothing and was given a suit and some underclothes, which had formerly belonged to 'the late Mr L.M. Stewart'. Two months later the couple applied for free treatment at the Dental Hospital. The COS Assistant Secretary noted that they had known 'this old couple for the last five years as thoroughly decent and respectable'. Their £2.4.0 per week allowed them to keep out of debt, but not to pay for necessary extras such as dental treatment.15 However, the couple were most fortunate and unusual in making the transition to reasonably comfortable old age: in 1926 they became inmates of the excellent Old Colonists Homes in Fitzroy, for which they paid little rent. The COS doubtless endorsed their respectability and assisted in their acceptance.

But many of the problems of old age in the interwar years were intractable, and most people were far less fortunate than Joseph L. For example, George G. was also regarded by the COS as decent and deserving, but received very limited support in excruciating circumstances. He was an engineer with good testimonials from the government departments which ceased to employ him at age sixty. By January 1926, at age sixty-one he had been unemployed for five months, despite determined efforts to apply for jobs. He was too young for the aged pension, which commenced at sixty-five. His wife Minnie was seeking an invalid pension because of severe rheumatoid arthritis which left her helpless in bed when he was out job hunting. Their only son had died at age twenty-three. Notice to quit had been served because they owed £5 in rent, the piano was seized and many articles pawned to buy food. The COS case-worker authorised a grant of £5 to give this 'decent couple' a breathing space, as George G. was on the verge of losing his mind. The only position available to him was in Sydney, so his wife had to go into the Melbourne Hospital.16

Three years later George G. contacted the COS from Sydney to ask if the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg would be a decent place for his wife who had rheumatoid arthritis. He had meanwhile suffered a long, painful illness with pleurisy and four relapses, involving eight months in hospital and a lawsuit to reclaim money. The COS Secretary regretted that his wife would find it very difficult to secure admission to the Austin Hospital: 'sufferers from rheumatoid arthritis are generally referred to one of the Benevolent Homes'. George G. responded, 'as to the Benevolent Home, no thank you', an entirely understandable sentiment given the overcrowded state and inadequate care in those huge institutions in the 1920s. His poor wife had already endured eight months in such 'benevolent' asylums, with no attempt at cure. Once the verdict on George G.'s lawsuit was reached, he hoped to return to Melbourne to welcome his wife back into a home of their own. There the COS file ends, leaving a question as to whether such an outcome was even a remote possibility.17

The two cases explored so far involved clients initially seeking help to find work, though the COS could only offer advice about possible avenues to pursue. However, the majority of their elderly clients made specific requests for COS grants for free dental and medical treatment and for spectacles. Their need arose from their poverty due to unemployment, their reluctance to apply for an aged pension, or the inadequacy of pensions to cover extra medical necessities. Mrs Jane S., a widow aged sixty-six, lived with her son in two rooms in Fitzroy in 1926. Her invalid pension was inadequate to cover her debts of 26s 6d for spectacles, and she would soon go blind with cataracts in both eyes. The COS case enquiry worker reluctantly awarded only eight shillings towards the debt on the spectacles, noting that she was not favourably impressed by Mrs S.: her appearance was dirty and she appeared to have 'gone down in the world' through drink, leaving beer bottles outside the kitchen door. Mrs S. also resented COS enquiries made of her neighbours.18

Elizabeth M. was aged fifty-eight in 1931, and her unemployed husband was sixty, while their rent payments on a house in Pascoe Vale were twelve months in arrears. Mrs M. applied to the COS for four shillings to pay for spectacles, given their lack of funds, but could offer no references: 'prefers to do without glasses rather than have friends know of position.' The COS case enquiry worker described Elizabeth M. as 'a fine type of woman, reliable and good living, evidently feeling her position keenly'—which always pleased COS staff—and the spectacles were paid for. Nineteen years later, when Mrs M.'s case again reached the COS, they were both now aged pensioners, in their later seventies. She had been knocked down by a car in a hit and run accident (like Helen McCrae), and her hand and lower arm had to be amputated. She needed an artificial hand rather than an arm with a hook, and found it very difficult to manage, forcing her husband to do the housework. As the artificial hand was expensive, her two sons volunteered to contribute £2.10.0 each and Mrs M. £15, while the COS paid the unspecified balance.19 The COS obtained contributions from families whenever possible.

Teeth were ranked high among the health problems for old people in Australia and England who were living at home. For example, Dr J.H. Sheldon conducted an inquiry in 1948 for the British Nuffield Foundation into the social medicine of old age in Wolverhampton. Approximately 60 per cent of his sample of 583 elderly people depended on dentures, having no teeth of their own, while 10 per cent used only their gums, having neither natural teeth nor dentures. Though 116 people (26 per cent) used their own teeth, only fourteen people actually had a complete set of natural teeth. 'The gross deterioration of the nation's teeth' had been exacerbated by a generation of extreme medical opinion which endorsed extraction of all teeth when there were dental problems.20 The very numerous applications to the COS for grants for extractions of all teeth at the Dental Hospital suggest that the findings for Wolverhampton were relevant to Australia in the interwar years.

The major emphasis of requests to the Charity Organisation Society shifted radically in the 1940s from medical and dental treatment and advice on obtaining work, to a new focus on accommodation problems: these were aggravated during the war, with no replacement building, and acute shortages of staff and funding. This change of focus was later reflected in the change of name to the Citizens Welfare Service (CWS) in 1947. Old people now desperately required adequate rooms in boarding houses or assistance in gaining admission to overcrowded benevolent asylums. These files illuminate the personal misery caused by a severe shortage of accommodation and excessive rental charges for squalid rooms in boarding houses, leaving little pension money for food, gas, clothes, and medical necessities. Victoria was several years ahead of other states in identifying this accommodation crisis among sectors of the frail elderly.

In 1942 Mrs Ellen C. was an 81-year-old widow who had been living at the Alexander Rest Home in Fairfield at the high rate of forty-two shillings per week. The means test deprived her of a pension because she had once owned a confectionary business. Since then her alcoholic son had drunk away the proceeds and disappeared with her remaining funds, while his mother was 'very deaf and definitely feeble-minded'. When the matron of the rest home died in 1942 it was taken over by a company which placed Mrs C.'s outstanding rental debt of £160 in the hands of public trustees. The new proprietor contacted the police to remove the old lady at once, but to their credit the police refused. The COS attempted to obtain a pension for Mrs C. to improve her chances of gaining accommodation, but she was incapable of completing and signing the application forms. The COS tried to find a place for Mrs C. at several institutions, including the Little Sisters of the Poor in nearby Northcote, but all replied that there were no vacancies and long waiting lists. The COS case enquiry officer noted regretfully that there was nothing further he could do and it is there that the information on this sad story ends. The _Argus_ gave numerous similar examples of the eviction of frail elderly people from boarding houses or rest homes due to inability to pay rent or a degree of disability the owners would not tolerate.21 The COS only acted as advocates for 'worthy' clients, whilst the 'undeserving' elderly were often in even worse predicaments than Mrs C.

In 1945 Mrs Ettie H. was a 75-year old widowed and bed-ridden pensioner living with her daughter's family of nine uncontrollable children. The COS worker regarded their home in Beaumaris as exceedingly overcrowded and the daughter as incapable of looking after her nine unruly children, let alone a bed-ridden mother. Admission to a benevolent home was considered crucial, but Mrs H.'s severe physical incapacity counted against her. Both Mount Royal and Cheltenham Homes advised they had no vacancies, acute staff shortages, severe overcrowding and long waiting lists. So she had to continue living with her nine rowdy grandchildren, confined to her bed in a small noisy house.22

Sister Joyce Hay of the Brotherhood of St Laurence approached the Citizens Welfare Service in 1948 on behalf of Miss Ada B., a frail 75-year-old pensioner with no living relatives and nearly blinded by cataracts. For several years Ada B. had lived in various rooms in boarding houses 'often under bad conditions', where she was most unhappy and uncomfortable. Most recently she had lived at Hope Hall Salvation Army Hostel in Carlton, where inmates had to leave the building from 8.30 am until 5.30 pm each day, irrespective of age, health and weather. Consequently her health suffered so much that she had to be admitted for two months to the Melbourne Convalescent Home at Clayton. Sister Joyce Hay then found a vacant bed for her at Colchester Home for Elderly People in Northcote, but the cost at £3.3.0 was more than she could afford on her pension. Sister Hay asked the CWS to help defray the cost, to prevent Miss Ada B. again becoming homeless: 'We are most anxious that she shall not again have to endure the buffeting about and lack of security which has been her lot for so long.' If Miss Ada B. entered the Colchester home she could not contribute more than fifteen shillings per week, as the cost of her medicines absorbed a substantial part of her pension. But the CWS could only contribute towards the Colchester home for a week or so. There the record ends, with no note of any outcome and prospects decidedly bleak.23

### The Pensioners' Campaign for Social Justice in 1930s Victoria

In the 1930s Victorian pensioners attempted to mount a campaign to challenge the federal government's reduction of already meagre aged pensions. This crusade aimed to restore the pension increases of the early 1920s. At intervals between 1916 and 1925 the inadequate aged pension was revised upwards four times, in minimal response to the rising cost of living, especially rent and food prices. In 1922 the mayor of Port Melbourne Council, Councillor Witlowe, contended that the aged pension was still totally inadequate to support those with no other means, especially as increased rents often represented half the pension. The Bruce federal government twice raised the pension by 2s/6d a week, bringing it to £1 in 1925—the high point before the pension cuts of the early 1930s. Many more pensions were granted to keep pace with the rising proportion of older people in the interwar years, especially as the depression undermined their prospects of work. Further, many older people increasingly accepted that the aged pension was a right, though the COS files suggest that a minority of old people in Victoria still viewed it as a charity.24

During the revitalised Conservative federal government of Joseph Lyons and the United Australia Party from 1932–9, Stuart Macintyre concludes that 'complete paralysis was reached in the drawn-out argument over social policy'. No progress was made in social welfare, despite the harsh impact of the depression. The federal government pursued the idea of introducing a scheme for social insurance, including contributory pensions, following the British model, to save money, promote self-reliance and relieve the pensions burden. The United Australia Party saw a contributory system as vital to relieve the almost intolerable burden of the pension system, which they feared would undermine government finances. All pension costs had risen from 12.3 per cent of total revenues in 1910 to 26.7 per cent in 1925 and 34 per cent in 1935. But the cabinet was split on social insurance and years were wasted in debating a project which would have alienated many voters, as well as doctors and insurance societies.25

Severe economic depression from 1931 led the federal government to make savage cuts of 20 per cent to adjustable government expenditure to limit the public deficit. Old age pensions were reduced by 12 per cent from £1 to 17s/6d, but this meagre pension was conditional on meeting increasingly harsh requirements that excluded many old people or cut their pensions further.26 The rate of 17s/6d only applied to those with no other means of support, whilst for those with additional income or property the rate was reduced to fifteen shillings or less. The _Argus_ reported that there was 'a complete investigation into the circumstances of every pensioner' to discover where charges of fraud were justified. Even more galling for many, the _Financial Emergency Act_ of October 1932 attempted to force close relatives to contribute to the maintenance of pensioners.27 Such savage cuts and humiliating requirements were reminiscent of those in Victoria between 1900 and 1908, though many within the parliamentary party saw them as harsh and they were only sporadically implemented before repeal in 1934.

The Australian Pensioners League was the first attempt to establish a national organisation of pensioners. It was launched in November 1932, but many branches (including the Pensioners Association in Victoria) broke away from the autocratic parent body in various disputes, leaving it impotent by 1935. The Pensioners Association in Victoria published a fortnightly journal, _The Pensioner_ , from September 1933, which described in detail its campaign to reverse the pension cuts by uniting to apply pressure to the federal government. The Pensioners Association claimed to have 105 branches in Victoria, with a financial membership of 40 000. Not surprisingly there was a strong Labor bias in the Association's leadership, which included many Labor MLAs, and also in its platform to reverse 'the most vicious class legislation'. _The Pensioner_ cost 1½d fortnightly and was produced by the Footscray Branch. The enthusiastic response to the journal was illustrated by a letter to the editor from a seventy-year-old man delighted with the first issue: not only would the Association promote fairer treatment of pensioners, but it also gave him a challenging new interest in a life dominated by hard work since he was eight.28

The adverse dual impact of the economic depression and the pension cuts on the elderly stimulated many to support political activity but by no means all. Many had joined the Association because they were attracted by its schemes to offer funeral and death benefits, or special deals to obtain cheaper spectacles and medicines. Others sought the companionship and varied entertainments available at many branches. The office holders of the Pensioners Association were themselves usually elderly, with a rapid turnover due to illness and death. The level of enthusiasm and zeal for the political campaign to reverse pension cuts varied from branch to branch, sometimes explained by the effective branch leadership of particular Labor politicians.

On 29 May 1933, a general meeting of the Victorian Pensioners Association was called at St Silas Hall, Albert Park. The president of the Association, Mr J.D. Fox, urged members 'not to rest until pensioners had been restored to £1 a week'. This meeting was sufficiently well attended—and the Association's membership substantial enough at 40 000—to worry the Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons; he publicly stated that the Association was not officially recognised by the United Australia Party government.29 The early issues of _The Pensioner_ , reported on many more such 'monster' meetings, like that at Prahran Town Hall on 16 October 1933: 'Anything less than the full restoration of the pension to £1 per week and the repeal of the iniquitous property clauses of the Act, will not appease the wrath of pensioners.' They had a major fight ahead and would need to develop a strong organisation to influence the government, which 'has made the pensioners mortgage their houses to replenish the treasury'. The leading headline of the 23 November issue of the journal was 'Honor—not humiliation', insisting that pensions were given as a right by national policy, not politicians' charity. Politicians were humiliating pensioners as if they were a 'mendicant constituency, waiting humbly' for a handout.30

A conference was held of all Victorian branches of the Pensioners Association on 9 April 1934 at the Tabernacle in Collingwood, to prepare their campaign for the next federal election. A 'Fighting Platform' was agreed: the restoration of pensions to £1 per week was essential, with a permissible additional income of thirty-five shillings weekly. They also demanded the repeal of the clauses of the _Financial Emergency Act_ of October 1932 by which pensioners' relatives had to subsidise pensions. The Footscray Branch advised _The Pensioner_ 's readers that numerous relatives of pensioners had recently received notices demanding they show cause why they should not contribute to their relative's pension. This was seen as 'most humiliating... an attempt to heap further indignity upon the pensioners'. Evidently the government hoped many old people would forfeit their pensions rather than see their children harassed. This grievance was raised by many branches and aired forcefully at public meetings of the Association. When the government abandoned these clauses later in 1934, Association members were delighted at their victory. However, it was just as likely the government found its efforts to enforce the clauses ineffectual, especially given internal resistance.31

A greater grievance for pensioners was the federal provision in 1933 that made total pension payments in life a charge upon deceased pensioners' estates at death. There were massive protests at public meetings to voice their anger, as at the Bendigo meeting on 4 December 1933, with major speeches by James Jewell and A.E. Cook, MLAs for Brunswick and Bendigo. They were furious that the government might take pensioners' property at their death, even though the pension was a right. As a consequence of this provision many old people in Bendigo and elsewhere did not apply for a pension to which they were entitled, and some even surrendered their pension.32

But there was evidence that the pensioners' agitation across Victoria and elsewhere was having an effect on the government. Pensioners accused the Lyons government of showing no discretion to deserving cases and stretching the legislation to its limits. The leader article of _The Pensioner_ on 13 September 1934 declared that the Lyons government branded pensioners as paupers while alive, and bailiffs seized their property for debt when dead. They were delighted when in March 1935 the federal government announced amendments to the Pensions Act, abandoning its claims on the estates of deceased pensioners. As the _Argus_ noted sourly, expenditure on old age pensions was restored to the standard before the depression: this was 'a gross imposition upon the relatively small band of taxpayers' as the proportion of old people in the population increased.33

However, despite the Association's success in the repeal of the property provisions, it had failed by 1935 in its major aim of restoring the pension to £1 a week. The increase of 6d per week to eighteen shillings weekly from 1 July 1935 merely followed the cost of living index, and most branches saw it as an insult, 'a miserable pittance'. Many Pensioners' Association leaders were anxious about their minimal political impact throughout 1934. E.H. Davy of Yarraville sent an open letter to _The Pensioner_ in January 1934, stating the urgent need for a united pensioners' organisation throughout Australia. It was absurd and counter-productive to have several such organisations, even within the same states.34

A conference of 300 Victorian pensioners, notably those from the original Australian Pensioners League and the more recent Victorian Pensioners Association, met at the Brunswick Town Hall on 21 July 1934 in an attempt to bring about unity. Mr J. Cavanagh, the president of the Australian Pensioners' League in Victoria, was at pains to insist that his League had been the first in Victoria: other organisations such as the Pensioners Association had broken away from the League and assumed new but similar titles, implying they were the first. Mr Cavanagh noted that when the government saw their deep divisions, it might well ignore their advocacy on vital issues such as pensions. The League and the Association were rivals in Brunswick, Preston and elsewhere. Mr Cavanagh's divisive address was frequently interrupted, while the Mayor ineffectually urged the pensioners to settle their differences in an amicable manner. Not surprisingly, no resolutions were passed.35

The leader article of the Pensioners Association journal, _The Pensioner_ , on 17 January 1935 argued that 'Better organization of old age and invalid pensioners [is] a necessity'. It lamented the lack of political achievement in the two years since the Association was established. There were no less than four organisations in Victoria claiming to represent pensioners, but they were more concerned with fighting each other than pressing pensioners' claims on government. Similar conflict existed in other states. The editorial argued that a unified body across Australia might have altered the result of the last federal election. Unity was imperative. On 25 January 1935 the first interstate conference of the Pensioners' Association recommended the creation of a national council representing all pensioners to restore their full pension and improve conditions.36

But these efforts at unity did not bear fruit. The leading articles in _The Pensioner_ in October 1935 condemned the federal budget as a 'gross betrayal' of pensioners. They accused the Lyons government of failing to honour its promise to restore pensions to £1 per week because they still believed pensions weakened the moral fibre of recipients. The government had not moved on from the Victorian pensions debates of the 1890s: they had not yet accepted that old people were entitled to demand the pension as a right.37

The death-knell of the campaign for pensioners' unity was sounded in _The Pensioner_ on 13 February 1936: 'at the present time there is no organization existing capable of gaining appreciable improvement in the economic position of pensioners.' One organisation across Australia was vital, but they remained in the 'tragic position' of still having a multiplicity of organisations. The rivalry between the League and the Association had been corrosive, as pensioners gradually moved from one to the other, each claiming to be the most effective.38 Further meetings were called in 1936 to discuss the need for a national amalgamated pensioners' body across Australia, but without success.39

It is important to understand why the attempt to unite all pensioners, across Victoria and nationally, failed so dismally in the 1930s during a severe economic depression, when pensions and conditions were so bad. Some success might reasonably have been expected at such a critical time. But old people had an infinite variety of personal histories, aspirations, circumstances and needs, as did younger generations. It would always be a huge challenge to unite them, as it has been ever since. In addition, in the 1930s the personal circumstances of many old people were so dire that other issues took precedence over the political campaign to restore the pension to £1 a week.

### The Pensioners Association: Funeral Insurance and Social Activities

A vital need for many poor elderly people was to ensure that their funeral could be paid for without increasing the poverty of their families. This was made clear in _The Pensioner_ 's editorial of 7 May 1936: 'Journal makes final appeal for pensioners to unite. Present position in Victoria chaotic.' But it acknowledged that '[funeral] funds are regarded as the most important aspect and are put forward as an inducement to obtain new members'. But while the editorial agreed that funeral funds were fundamental for most pensioners, it insisted that improvement of pensioners' economic position should be the paramount question, especially as an eighteen shilling a week pension was 'a miserable pittance'.40

The passages relating to funeral insurance in _The Pensioner_ journal were reminiscent of the concerns of the elderly in the late nineteenth century. From October 1933 to June 1934 the Pensioners Association undoubtedly used funeral insurance as an incentive to join the Association for old age pensioners anxious about who would pay for their funerals. Substantial space in _The Pensioner_ was devoted to attracting new members by advertising cheap funeral insurance. In October 1933, for instance, the committee of the Fitzroy Branch entered a contract with Rayboulds Ltd, undertakers, for the burial of pensioners who joined their funeral benefit scheme. It cost one shilling on entry and 6d per week thereafter, to fund a £15 burial, provided subscriptions reached 7/6d at death. In November 1933 the Preston Branch invited representatives from the Temperance and General Life Assurance Society to attend their fortnightly meeting. They explained to members a scheme already operating successfully in Bendigo to insure pensioners below age seventy-five for a weekly premium of 6d, which ceased after ten years. This scheme carried the special feature of a free nursing service for policyholders by qualified nurses. The Northcote and Wedderburn branches were also examining similar schemes in November, all with an emphasis on self-help.41

On 23 November 1933 the leaders of the Pensioners' Association agreed to recommend the Temperance and General (T&G) Life Assurance scheme to all its branches. On 18 January 1934 a large advertisement appeared in _The Pensioner_ for a funeral benefit fund underwritten by T&G Assurance, with W.G. Rowen of Fitzroy as undertaker by special appointment. Members could apply to branch secretaries about their payments of 6d per week to secure immediate benefits. Subsequent issues of _The Pensioner_ described how much comfort and security the scheme brought its members. Catherine Thompson of Richmond, aged seventy-two, died in April 1934, but her relatives had no anxieties in organising her funeral as they simply notified her Richmond Branch. At the time of death she had only paid 11/6 into the fund, but no extra payment was required—though her relatives chose to pay an additional £3 for an extra mourning coach. Similarly, 'a dear old man' who was a member of the Wedderburn Branch died at eighty-seven, in May 1934, having lived in Wedderburn for sixty years. The funeral was conducted under the T&G Assurance scheme in 'an efficient, courteous and painstaking' manner. Indeed it was a deep source of comfort to attending relatives and pensioner friends: 'such sympathy has a healing effect on disturbed minds.' _The Pensioner_ emphasised that the Association's T&G Assurance scheme was a cheaper option for burial than competing schemes, and that numerous new members had joined.42

But after May 1934 there were no more references to the funeral insurance scheme in _The Pensioner_. By then the Association leaders were fully aware of their political weakness and disunity. They recognised that their cheap funeral insurance scheme was a greater attraction to members than their primary goal to increase the pension: indeed it was a counter-productive distraction. Instead the Pensioners' Association of Victoria introduced into their journal a new section on 'Notes on Health' and various schemes for obtaining medical and pharmaceutical benefits more cheaply. These were important alternative attractions for very poor old people whose pension was inadequate to cover such costs. But they did not offer the level of incentive of funeral insurance. The Footscray Branch made an arrangement in October 1933 with Mr Bradley, the chemist of Nicholson Street, to grant pensioners' concessions; also with Dr McCarthy of Paisley Street, 'to treat and advise members for a nominal fee'. In December 1933 the Prahran Branch thanked Dr Albert Bretherton for his kindness in attending pensioners at no charge; Dr Bretherton has been described as a saintly doctor who made money from the rich to attend the poor at no charge.43 The Hawthorn and Auburn branches and others followed in organising the services of doctors, nurses and chemists at reduced costs. Perhaps most important of all was the Preston Branch's initiative in September 1935; it arranged for a skilled local optician to offer special concessions for branch members. It also considered establishing a club for members needing cheap optical services to contribute a small weekly sum.44

Another novel attraction to counter the removal of funeral insurance was the 'Notes on Health' section added to _The Pensioner_ , written by Sister Catherine Rafferty, a district nurse, who offered advice on mental health in old age. She commented in _The Pensioner_ that 'the failure of the mind in old age is often less the result of natural decay than of disuse', while indolence could also cause decline of mental powers. As a sufferer with chronic rheumatism herself, Sister Rafferty recognised it was a bane of old age. Residence in a warm dry climate was beneficial, as was flannel underwear, but beer and wine should be avoided. Opium and sodium fomentations should be prescribed when pain was severe: potassium iodide, iron, arsenic and guiacol could be helpful. Older people should also exercise to use up surplus sugar by long walks and so prevent diabetes. Above all, 'Have young people about you; it is one's attitude to life and one's health that tells one's age'. Moreover, varied interests and useful occupations kept older people sane and overcame apathy. Women who knitted or read were more contented, as were men with hobbies such as gardening or even smoking.45

A large proportion of members were attracted to the Pensioners Association by its numerous social gatherings and entertainments. Mr Bruhn of the Footscray Branch emphasised the value of a 'Grand Social' in the Masonic Hall on 15 November 1933: 'It is essential that an interest in the affairs of life should be kept up and fostered' and that people reach out to others in the community. Singing, dancing and refreshments were organised for the occasion, attracting several hundred people. The Richmond Branch held a similar social gathering in the Gymnasium Hall on 23 October 1933, followed by a successful dance a week later. Many such socials aimed to attract 'the support of all classes, both young and old folks', and succeeded in encouraging members to bring families and grandchildren, avoiding age segregation. The Newport Branch arranged 'a Grand Picnic of the Pioneers' with their grand-children on Boxing Day 1933 at Williamstown. This was a members' special day out with all expenses paid by the branch. Picture nights were often held to raise funds for members' picnics or Christmas parties.46

The very slow improvement in the level of the old age pension was not achieved by the efforts of the pensioners' associations but by the eventual change of government to Labor and the gradual recovery of the economy from the early 1940s. Sadly, the failure of this first attempt to create an effective political pressure group of pensioners to influence government was to be replicated in the future. The various pensioners' organisations of the 1930s survived on and off in weakened form until about 1950. From time to time the central organisations collapsed and branches continued to fragment, with some becoming elderly citizens centres. By the early 1950s the pensioners' organisations in Victoria were again divided and weak, incapable of challenging the erosion of the purchasing power of the pension under Prime Minister Menzies. Then in 1954 Marjorie Nunan created a united pensioners' movement to be reckoned with (the Combined Pensioners' Association of Victoria), providing energetic leadership and a focus on pension rates, health and housing. As we shall see later, Marjorie Nunan's pensioner campaign in Victoria coincided with a far broader effort to rescue 'the forgotten people', with the strong support of the press, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and an army of compassionate supporters. She created a united pensioners movement in Victoria by 1965, leading to the foundation of a Commonwealth pensioners' federation. The highpoint was the national broadcast of a pensioners' 'sit down' on the steps of Parliament House in Canberra which achieved some improvement in pension rates.47

As in the 1930s, it proved hard to sustain these pensioner campaigns. From the 1970s some people hoped that the rapid ageing of the population would help to create a block vote of older people. But as Irene Ellis warned, 'Age structure of the electorate bears no systematic relationship to voting patterns, with the aged belonging to the general social class of their area rather than forming an age-based class across social divisions'.48 Rather than a voting block focused on age-based issues, older voters were more likely to emphasise local issues which fell within the sphere of particular local governments. Even by 1980 the American-based Grey Panthers had little effective impact in Australia, where older people were seen as unlikely to unite in acting for their own age-group as a collective identity. Aged pensioners have not been seen as highly politicised in Australia. As an increasing proportion of older people became homeowners, it seemed less likely that they would participate in a broad-based political movement.49 It is an extraordinary testament to the dire need, desperation and determination of the early pension organisations of the 1930s that they achieved as much as they did, given the subsequent decades of weak organisation of the aged.

### Notes

1 Macintyre, _The Oxford History of Australia_ , pp. 774–63.

2 _MJA_ , 3 July 1920.

3 _SMH_ , 1922.

4 ibid., 21 Mar. 1928.

5 _Truth_ , 27 May 1928.

6 _SMH_ , 24, 30 May 1928.

7 ibid., 6, 22 Nov. 1928.

8 _MJA_ , 24 Jan., 3 July 1920.

9 _SMH_ , 1 Feb. 1928.

10 ibid.

11 ibid., 3 Feb., 4 June 1928; 3 Jan. 1929.

12 See e.g. Peel, pp. 83.1–83.15; Macintyre, _The Oxford History of Australia_ , p. 284.

13 Names have been altered as the Citizens Welfare Society requested anonymity for clients.

14 Joseph L, case 31227, box 1, 9 Sept. 1921–10 April 1922, Charity Organisation Society (COS)/Citizens Welfare Society of Victoria (CWV).

15 ibid.

16 George G, case 35628, box 19, ibid.

17 ibid.

18 Jane S, case 35753, ibid.

19 Elizabeth M, case 49458, box 55, ibid.

20 Sheldon, pp. 46–7, 52–6.

21 Mrs Ellen C, case 61460, box 104, CWV.

22 Mrs Ettie H, case 62902, box 101, ibid.

23 Miss Ada B, case 64744, box 117, ibid.

24 _Argus_ , 7 Oct. 1925, 3 June 1922, 22 July 1930; Dickey, pp. 156–8.

25 Macintyre, _The Oxford History of Australia_ , p. 303; Watts, pp. 232–5.

26 Macintyre, _The Oxford History of Australia_ , pp. 270–1; Dickey, pp. 156–7.

27 _Argus_ , 6, 16 Sept. 1932.

28 _The Pensioner_ , 12, 26 Oct. 1933.

29 _Argus_ , 30 May 1933; _SMH_ , 25 May 1933.

30 _The Pensioner_ , 9, 23 Nov.; 12, 26 Oct. 1933.

31 ibid., 24 May 1934; _Argus_ , 4 April, 3 July 1934.

32 ibid.

33 _Argus_ , 14, 15 Mar. 1935; _The Pensioner_ , 4 Jan., 26 April, 5 July 1934.

34 _The Pensioner_ , 17 Jan., 1 Mar. 1934; _Argus_ , 24 Jan. 1935.

35 _Argus_ , 24 July 1934.

36 _SMH_ , 26 Jan. 1935; _The Pensioner_ , 17 Jan. 1935; _Argus_ , 26 Jan. 1935.

37 _The Pensioner_ , 10, 24 Oct. 1935.

38 ibid., 13 Feb. 1936.

39 _Argus_ , 16 April, 3 Sept. 1936.

40 _The Pensioner_ , 7 May 1936.

41 ibid., 9 Nov. 1933.

42 ibid., 18 Jan., 26 April, 10, 24 May 1934.

43 Lowenstein, passim; McCalman, p. 131.

44 _The Pensioner_ , 12 Oct., 7, 20 Dec. 1934; 29 Aug. 1935.

45 ibid., 9 Nov. 1933, 20 June 1935, 15, 29 Aug. 1935.

46 ibid., 9 Oct., 23 Oct., 9 Nov. 1933; 18 Jan. 1934.

47 Ellis, pp. 317–20.

48 ibid., p. 324.

49 Job, pp. 151–3; Wiles, pp. 10–3.

## 5

## Generations and Gender: Old Age in the McCrae Family, 1874–1961

Earlier chapters emphasised the importance of the different experiences of successive generations on reaching old age. Each generation carries a different legacy into old age, drawn from childhood when they formed basic values, and from their differing social, economic and family experiences in adulthood. Old age is powerfully influenced by the historical period in which people lived their adult lives before sixty or so. This chapter will explore the influence of generations and gender on old age through the records of the McCrae family over almost a century. Georgiana McCrae was challenged by migration from Britain to a small pioneer society, and by the decline in her social status and means. Her son George McCrae was the most fortunate, in his disposition, means, health and family life, and not least in the care of his loving daughter Helen. Hugh and Helen McCrae, as the third generation, were most severely challenged by two world wars and economic depression, when governments and society paid little attention to the elderly.

Within each generation there were many variables affecting the McCraes' experiences of ageing, illustrated most vividly by comparing Helen's later years with those of her brother Hugh. Both siblings existed on tiny annuities, but the variable of gender was vitally important. Helen suffered infinitely more than Hugh from loneliness, poverty and lack of purpose. Hugh could always rely on his literary talent, his many friends, and especially his three supportive daughters to look after him in their homes. By contrast, having spent the best years of her life caring for their parents, Helen was determined to maintain her independence in old age, even at the cost of loneliness, depression, and poverty.

### Georgiana McCrae (1804–1890)

Georgiana Huntly McCrae was a remarkable woman by any standard, as Brenda Niall's excellent biography demonstrates. She was the illegitimate daughter of a Scottish duke, with expectations of an inheritance of £10 000 which never materialised and so blighted her final years. Georgiana was a gifted portrait painter who proved in her youth her capacity to work for 'fame and money'. But she failed to realize her artistic potential because of a conflict between 'parenting and painting', reinforced by family disapproval. In marrying lawyer Andrew McCrae in 1830, Georgiana in effect chose marriage and a family over an artistic career, but her choice was unfortunate as Andrew was weak and feckless. Andrew McCrae's unilateral decision for the family to emigrate to the Australian colonies in 1839 intensified her indifference to her husband. In Australia Andrew failed to become either a successful lawyer or squatter, but finally achieved a steady income as a police magistrate and warden of the goldfields, mainly living far removed from his family. As Norman Cowper observed, 'Georgiana was a woman of strong character, exceptional education, wit, charm and cultivated taste'.1 But she suffered the insecurity of life with a frequently absent husband, and resentment at his weakness and lack of affection.

In middle age Georgiana McCrae endured numerous disappointments and grievances, yet she still had hopes of the duke's legacy to sustain her family's future and even recharge her artistic career. But in 1864, at the significant age of sixty, Georgiana suffered the crushing disappointment of elimination from the bequest so vital to her hopes of an independent old age. The loss of her anticipated inheritance caused 'deep psychological damage', perhaps an emotional breakdown, accentuated by public humiliation, since her social circle was well aware of the catastrophe. Three years later, at the age of sixty-three she took the hazardous step of requesting a law firm to proceed in a judicial separation from her long-absent husband. This caused some scandal for the McCrae family, but Georgiana's legal proceeding led Andrew to move back to Britain in 1867 for seven years. He returned to Melbourne in 1874, as a broken man dying of nephritis, to be nursed by Georgiana and her daughters. Andrew and Georgiana had spent only eighteen of their forty-four years of marriage living together.2

For Georgiana McCrae, old age effectively lasted from 1874 until her death in 1890. At seventy—which was a far more challenging age in 1874 than today—Georgiana was a penniless and embittered widow, as Andrew had left her and her children nothing. She was intensely resentful of her increasing frailty and her physical and financial dependence on her children. In old age Georgiana's memories were focused not on her considerable achievements, but on perceived tragedies and unfulfilled artistic ambitions. She suffered pain and weakness with advancing years, endured with strident complaints. Arthritis and poor circulation further reduced her hopes of reviving her painting, while her memory began to fail in her last years.3

Georgiana's married children were wonderfully kind and generous to their ageing mother, who must often have seemed difficult and ungrateful. Georgiana divided her time chiefly between the Hawthorn houses of her eldest son George McCrae and her daughter Maggie Maine. George and Augusta McCrae could not have been more thoughtful and attentive, but Georgiana found her six grandchildren noisy and tiresome. She complained regularly in 1884 of depression, sleeplessness and winter coughs, while arthritis left her unable to paint or draw. From 1887 Georgiana grumbled that her memory was failing, while other ailments increased, including asthma and bronchitis. A year before her death in 1890, she regretted that 'I feel very weak and fancy that I grow weaker everyday. It is very trying not to be able to do anything in the shape of work'.4

In February 1890 Georgiana was jubilant on receiving an entirely unexpected inheritance of £300 from an old friend. She planned to use it to achieve her dream in old age of an independent 'ground floor flat of two rooms', with ample space for piano and painting materials. But Georgiana died just three months later, her dream of a long-awaited independence in her own home unfulfilled. As Brenda Niall concluded, Georgiana became 'the bitter old woman who could not shed a tear', nor express her undoubted love for her children. She had been unable to develop her considerable talents, her marriage was a disappointment and she ultimately saw her life as a failure.5

Earlier in her life Georgiana McCrae's achievements had been remarkable, but depression and ill health in old age led her to focus on perceived problems and disadvantages. Compared with most elderly women in late-nineteenth century Melbourne she was remarkably fortunate in having a welcoming family with the means to accommodate and nurse her when necessary. Her grandchildren unfortunately remembered her many complaints and selfish behaviour in extreme old age. Her grandson Hugh, who became a poet, was thirteen when Georgiana died, his sister Helen fifteen. Georgiana's embittered account of old age had a powerful impact on her two teenage grandchildren, who often referred to it in their own later years as a fate to be avoided.

### George McCrae (1833–1927)

Georgiana McCrae's eldest son, George Gordon McCrae, enjoyed the most rewarding experience of ageing of the McCrae family's three generations considered here. Sir Norman Cowper described him thus: 'McCrae was tall and handsome, had an artistic temperament, a fine courtesy and "a princely gift for friendship".' He was a gentle and kind man, well liked and admired. He was fortunate to live to the age of ninety-four, in excellent health with an active mind to the end. He was well educated by his clever mother and a good tutor. He later earned a good living in the Victorian government service from 1854 to 1893, where he performed well, retiring as deputy registrar-general. George married Augusta Brown in 1871 and had six children. Georgiana's hopes were focused on her eldest son, though she knew he was less talented than she, and his 'amiable diffidence' was a challenge. The real love of George's life was creative writing, both prose and poetry, to which he devoted his thirty-four enjoyable years of retirement. He had been at the centre of the Melbourne literary world in the 1870s, and in retirement published a historical novel, _John Rous_ , and a selection of poems.6

George McCrae had the advantages of a strong constitution, clear mind, and equable temperament in old age, and enjoyed the loving care of his unmarried daughter Helen for many years. At ninety-three years of age George still wrote to his son Hugh in a beautiful hand and eloquent prose about literature, family news, and his cultural endeavours.7 In 1923, four years before George's death, an anonymous press cutting of a journalist's visit preserved in a family album, paints a positive portrait of the old man at ninety. The journalist's daunting mental picture of 'couches, shawls and quivering old age' required radical revision on arrival, as he wrote later:

I never wish to live until 90, but if I do please make me like George Gordon McCrae. There is scarce a quiver in his voice. His eye still twinkles at a joke and lights at a quip. His tall, slender frame is somewhat bent, but his step is extraordinarily firm, as is his hand clasp. His hair is scanty, but his nose, that sign of race, is remarkable for its fine curved nostrils, while his brow is smooth and serene.

Afterwards George took the journalist into his 'den' to offer a copy of his book, _John Rous_. The imposing desk was littered with manuscripts, books and the paraphernalia of 'a man with many interests and as many occupations'. As they parted George added whimsically, 'There is nothing like having memories—and a little imagination to help them out'.8

Helen McCrae's letters are revealing about her father's final year when his remarkable good health at last failed. On New Years' Eve 1926 she had little hope for 'a decent year for George and me... he's getting very feeble'. George kept falling asleep, suffered bouts of neuralgia and wondered 'when he is going to feel like a man again'. In January 1927 his extreme weakness left her 'really frightened' during a heatwave: 'I kept him alive on brandy... he looks an awful wreck' Their close family friend Jack Joshua did not desert them—he called every day to help.9 On George McCrae's death in August 1927, Ernest Watt, a businessman friend of Hugh's, wrote to Helen, 'You must feel so very lost without him, as he had been your special care all these years. What a wonderful man he was, working up to almost the last moment of his life!' Looking back in her own old age, in 1955, on decades of memories, Helen wrote of her father: 'I watched dear old George for 4 years getting tireder and tireder—but never bored and always interested in anything and he had lots of men to come and see him.' Helen and George were even arranging to travel to the Seychelles when he felt well enough—'he liked to bluff himself'.10 Helen was left alone at the age of fifty-three to contemplate future directions.

### Hugh McCrae (1876–1958)

Hugh McCrae was George McCrae's second son and Georgiana's grandson. He was also the beloved brother of Helen McCrae. Their weekly correspondence over many decades offers an intimate understanding of their contrasting experiences of ageing, which illuminate significant gender differences. Initially articled to a Melbourne architect, Hugh McCrae was encouraged by his literary friends, including Norman and Lionel Lindsay, to make a living by freelance writing and drawing. In 1901 Hugh and his wife Nancy Adams shared a house with the Norman Lindsays in Sydney, where Hugh remained, apart from a few years in the USA. His beloved wife Nancy died suddenly in 1943 and three years later he made an unfortunate second marriage, which was soon dissolved.11

Norman Cowper described Hugh McCrae as 'A man of great charm and attractiveness, enhanced by his classical good looks, McCrae was a rare human being with a "Rabelaisian sense of humour"'. Mary Gilmore considered Hugh McCrae to be Australia's finest lyric poet, and Judith Wright saw him as 'a poet to love and admire'; but the early admiration of his work has not been fully sustained over the years. Hugh's poetry was colourful, romantic and whimsical, but is more often seen today as lacking coherent structure and ideas. He earned little by his writing, relying mainly on a Commonwealth Literary Fund pension of £52 a year from 1928, and £2 a week from 1941, presumably in addition to a small family annuity. His numerous letters to his sister Helen, like all his correspondence, were beautifully written and illustrated.12

Like Georgiana, Hugh became heavily dependent on married children in frail old age; indeed Hugh's daughters were even more welcoming and long-suffering than were Georgiana's daughters-in-law. Greater tolerance was perhaps extended to grandfathers than grandmothers: Georgiana could be difficult and less than grateful, while Hugh charmed all. But after half a lifetime living with her parents, having cared for both in advancing years, Helen sought a room of her own and complete independence from her family, even at the cost of loneliness and poverty. Nevertheless, in Helen's weaker and more depressed moments she would hardly have been human had she not envied Hugh his lot. Soon after the death of Hugh's wife Nancy in 1943, when Hugh was sixty-seven and Helen two years older, she wrote to him:

I wish now that I had come and stayed in the room you both offered me—'if only'—the two saddest words—they are always cropping up. I am so happy for you that you have 2 houses and both full of charming grand kids. They will keep you forever young... I am too old to readjust my life.

Nine months later Helen observed that with three daughters and nine grandchildren he would never know 'stark loneliness', with no one to care.13

Hugh McCrae had his first intimations of the perils of advancing years with a heart attack early in 1942, accompanied by warnings of high blood pressure and a dilated heart. But the sudden and unexpected death of his wife Nancy a year later truly marked the time when he began to see himself as ageing; this was accentuated by his anguished remorse at never showing his genuine feelings for his wife: 'Now for me, life is all but over.' For some time Hugh lived on his own in Camden, Sydney, though his friend Harry Chaplin warned him that living alone was bad for him and likely to induce introspection.14 As years passed, Hugh spent increasing time living with one or another of his three daughters and their families. Hugh often tried to persuade his sister Helen to share his Camden house, but she always refused politely, preferring to remain independent and anxious to avoid becoming a housekeeper and carer to an ageing relative once more, even a beloved brother.

At the age of seventy-four, in 1950, Hugh McCrae—still living mainly at Camden—suffered serious depression. He wrote to his sister Winifred Bligh that this mysterious sudden melancholia, 'like a nightmare octopus', left him feeling like a lunatic, 'locked in a glass case', disengaged from the real world. Hugh's generous and loving daughter, Honey Cowper—married to Norman Cowper, a leading Sydney solicitor—once again welcomed her father to her home at Wahroonga, where Hugh's sleep was disturbed by Norman's bull-terrier. Hugh left Honey's home after a week with 'an awkward excuse' to move on for six months to another loving daughter Mahdi (Marjorie McWilliam) at Vaucluse, 'where there is better air and just as much kindness'. A doctor finally diagnosed melancholia due to high blood pressure, old age and malnutrition, but promised a speedy cure if Hugh took medication to counter depression. Hugh eventually found that forcing himself to work at his writing helped to bring temporary control over his symptoms.15 In 1951 Dr Carter diagnosed the additional problem of diabetes, which required three months' treatment and 'measured food' forever. Hugh appreciated his daughters' devoted care. 'Honey and Mahdi are both so good to me. They seem like Nancy [his wife] over again', with Honey cooking his 'special meals' and spoiling him.16

In 1951 Nettie Palmer sent Honey Cowper a kindly note of advice, drawn from her own experience of looking after a demanding mother, at the expense of her own health. Nettie understood that Honey was justifiably anxious about her father's illness and felt responsible for him, but she warned: 'Don't let yourself become too deeply submerged in anxiety... You've got sisters, and the fact that you're the eldest is not all that serious: I mean, you're just one of them... Do keep well, Honey, you pin the home together.'17 It was scarcely surprising that in September 1952 Hugh again suggested that Helen might share a flat with him in Double Bay, Sydney, though he guessed correctly that she 'wisely wouldn't'.18

Failure to control Hugh's high blood pressure led to a series of falls: 'at Camden I registered 5 falls in 8 days... when I'm down it takes a long while to get up again', more than two hours on one occasion. However, this time 'Mahdi has taken me in hand' and he was back at Vaucluse being cared for by a daughter. By March 1954 Hugh was aged seventy-nine, and with so many grandchildren he felt his age: 'I still have a fair amount of fun with my arteries... dropping suddenly down in the street and trying to get up again.' As a result, he seldom ventured out. On 11 October 1955 Hugh advised his sister that he was at last forced by ill-health and old age to 'break up' his independent home at Camden and to move permanently to join the Cowpers in Wahroonga. Honey cheered her father up by taking him for long drives in the countryside in her car, leading him to report that 'I'm happier here than I was in Camden'. Hugh's son-in-law Norman Cowper was another 'angel' who brought him morning tea in bed.19

Soon afterwards Hugh was slow in descending from a bus, and was hurled from the footboard against a telegraph post. He became unconscious and suffered delayed shock, his reactions and memory impaired—'I can't think', nor could he write for publication any more.20 The doctor feared recovery might take three years: 'Now I seem to live with the 'ghosts of the Past.' 'My head gets more and more fuddled.'21 As Hugh told Nettie Palmer, 'Chief trouble is loss of memory, even of words, so that I can't think, write, or talk. Consequently I keep away from people and live to myself'.22 But he continued to enjoy music, letters from friends and family, and car excursions. Increasingly Hugh also felt very close to his deceased wife Nancy. Since he did not believe in God or the Devil, 'I'm content to look forward to a nice long comfortable sleep in the forever'.23

Later in 1957 Winifred Bligh wrote to her sister Helen McCrae: 'I suppose Honey has told you that she could not manage Hugh any longer. She found a nice little hospital in Wahroonga where he is now. She says he went quite happily and they are very good to him.' Doctors said he did not have a stroke, though Winifred thought his condition seemed like one. Hugh McCrae died on 17 February 1958. As Winifred observed, the Cowpers could have no regrets, 'They were so wonderful to Hugh'. They would all miss him terribly: 'but he is far happier, as he told me—he could not think or write or remember anything.'24 Mary Melville sensibly consoled Honey: 'It is no tragedy when a man of his age goes... You will soon feel that your father was not going to be any happier the longer he lived, and he'd had a fine useful life.'25

### Helen McCrae (1874–1961)

Helen McCrae is known to posterity, if at all, only as the spinster sister of her relatively famous brother Hugh. Fortunately, Helen's detailed weekly letters from 1931 to 1957 from Melbourne to her brother Hugh in Sydney, reveal the impressive story of a courageous woman struggling to survive alone in the face of poor health, little money and declining sight. These letters, written over a quarter of a century, constitute an exceptional archive for the study of old age during economic depression, the Second World War and beyond. Helen's story is illuminating on the challenges of enduring the trials and shortages of war on a small fixed income, as the means test made her ineligible for a government pension.

The keys to Helen McCrae's choices in old age lay in her powerful memories of her grandmother and her father in their final years. Helen often recalled how her poor grandmother, Georgiana, 'must have suffered, having to live with her relations in her old age'. Helen congratulated herself that she had saved her own parents from Georgiana's fate: 'They both died in their own house in security.'26 Helen's bleak view of her grandmother's fate reflected a teenager's memory of a bitter old woman's complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Helen was resentful of her long years as housekeeper and carer for her ageing parents, George Gordon and Augusta. However, having sacrificed her own independence to her parents until she was fifty-three, she was determined to live her separate life in her own rooms in future, free of family obligations, however restricted her material circumstances.

For the first time in her life, on her father's death in 1927, at the age of fifty-three, Helen contemplated her independent life in Melbourne. Hugh invited her to live with him in Camden in Sydney, but this led to the first of Helen's many polite refusals. Four years later, when Hugh repeated the suggestion, Helen responded:

Thank you very much for asking me to Camden but I am too old to stay in anyone's house and too poor at present to travel. If I ever go away again I will go to a hotel and be free to do as I like. I don't feel as if I ever wanted to go to Sydney any more, too many relations.27

This theme recurred in Helen's correspondence with her brother, whenever Hugh's invitation became more pressing. On a cold, wet day a year or so later, she was feeling 'beautifully free' in her rented room, whereas she would only feel claustrophobic living in other people's houses. As her health declined and her years increased she was often tempted to join her brother in Sydney, though she worried she might be even lonelier there.

Certainly Helen McCrae's lodgings in Melbourne left much to be desired and seemed at times a high price to pay for independence, but they were all she could afford. Helen rented two rooms at 23 Murphy Street, South Yarra, in a house owned by three Martin sisters. When Ethel Martin died in 1943 Helen felt insecure and afraid that the other two sisters would soon die, leaving her homeless, like so many others in wartime. Even by 1944, when she had lived in their house for eighteen years, the two sisters were still unfriendly. Sometimes Helen might go for three days at a time without seeing them, especially as they never visited each others' rooms. She saw herself as the perfect tenant, who paid her rent on time, kept her wireless turned down, and had almost no visitors. Even when she was very ill she never bothered them.28

On her meagre annuity of £3 per week Helen McCrae could not afford to move. Cheap rental accommodation was so scarce in wartime Melbourne in the 1940s that a severe housing crisis for the elderly was acknowledged by the press. On New Years' Eve 1944 Jean Martin informed Helen she must leave in three weeks as the sisters intended to let the entire house: 'I was panic stricken for 8 days, couldn't eat, sleep, read or listen to the wireless. It is impossible to find anywhere to lay your head, and if you can, you have to pay dearly for it.' Her panic was well justified given the serious housing shortage. However, Helen's problem was solved when ill-health obliged the two surviving Martin sisters to move into a rest home for the elderly. Helen was fortunate that the new tenants were congenial: 'No more is the house sealed up and the blinds drawn to keep out the dust—it is full of light and air and open doors.'29

The mental and physical maladies of old age were interwoven. Loneliness, financial stress, and insecurity could lead to depression, apathy, neglect of diet and physical deterioration. Three major concerns gradually demoralised Helen McCrae over the decades: deteriorating health, sheer poverty, and loneliness. These three demons were intertwined. Wartime restrictions reinforced Helen's sense of poverty and insecurity. She found it difficult to live on her small annuity of £3 per week, which made her ineligible for the aged pension, and for medical and pharmaceutical benefits. Those on small fixed incomes like Helen's could sometimes be worse off than pensioners. In the early 1940s her doctor warned that she was suffering from malnutrition from 'living on 10/- a week' for food: she would 'go to pot' if she did not change her ways by eating meat, fruit and vegetables.30 But as Helen often said, 'You can't do much on £3 a week'. In 1944 Helen told her niece Honey Cowper she could not join Hugh in Sydney: 'I am tied to my rooms. I have never been so poverty stricken. So I must stay put until after the war.'31 Wartime restrictions substantially increased Helen's poverty with the consequence that 'no one ever comes here' because she had no money to return hospitality. In 1948 she told Hugh she could never go away again, 'I couldn't scrape up enough money to buy clothes or fares—poverty is horribly humiliating'.32

Helen McCrae had serious health reasons to account for her mounting fears of a lonely old age. In 1939 she damaged her leg, which took nearly a year to heal. Dr Gerald Weigall examined her thoroughly, declaring she had high blood pressure, a serious condition, for which there was then no treatment. She also suffered from malnutrition and a family tendency to depression. He advised her to take a week in a private hospital. As Helen obviously could not afford it, Dr Weigall recommended a stiff upper lip and distractions, such as a picture show or a tram journey.33

From the 1930s Helen made passing references to severe problems with her deteriorating sight, and in 1940, at the age of sixty-six, she called in a doctor as she was 'panic stricken about my eyes'. The doctor merely gave her a tonic, with advice to distract herself and never 'sit alone and brood'. By 1943 Helen had consulted several eye specialists, which she could ill afford, but to no avail: 'fear has been stalking me.' She was terrified when in 1945 she found she could no longer see the beautiful pencil drawings which decorated Hugh's letters, and told him: 'I look on Death as a friend. Just to know that nothing matters any more. I blame my eyes. They've always handicapped me. I'll just trust to luck that I'll die in time.' Two years later she was again 'panic-stricken' and too afraid to call a doctor, as she was more often seeing 'black lightning'.34

Despite Helen McCrae's deteriorating eyesight and her intense bouts of depression, she admitted she had much to be thankful for when the 'blue devils' left her. Her complaints of loneliness usually accompanied her depression, which seemed at the time to be never-ending. At other times, especially in the earlier decades, Helen met more old friends and found more enjoyment in life than her lamentations suggested. She often found pleasure walking, even in the wind and the rain: 'I escape into the gardens and worship the trees and listen to the birds. It's a beautiful world.' When she was well enough, 'I go to town every day sometimes twice to mix with the rabble'.35 Helen had numerous invitations from family and friends, many declined, but not all. On the rare occasions she chose to visit her relatives in Sydney she was warmly welcomed. Some days she did have visitors to her home, especially on birthdays.

Above all, for twenty-five years Helen McCrae had a generous and beloved friend in John M. Joshua—known to her family as JMJ—about four years older than Helen and a friend of the McCraes' since childhood. Indeed, JMJ reminded Helen of 'dear old George', her own father, and was like a second father. JMJ kept an eye on her after her father's death, often coming to her rescue when she was sick or depressed, bringing food and company. On her recovery he took her for daily drives, including an excursion to the sea on her sixtieth birthday in 1934. She in turn comforted JMJ and his wife when they lost their son Hugh in the war. Helen reported almost gaily to Hugh on 19 July 1944, at the age of seventy: 'JMJ is full of rheumatic pains—all my friends grow old and out of order—however he and I still go a-walking... beautiful walking weather and there is always something amusing to see.' On her 71st birthday John M. Joshua arranged an excellent celebration, bringing masses of flowers before their morning drive, 'then to lounge seats at a picture and tea and cigarettes after'. JMJ used to keep her wireless in order, supply her with wood, and even used twenty-seven precious wartime coupons to buy her a much-needed warm winter coat. During her illness at Easter 1946 'everyone was awfully good to me. I didn't know I had so many friends'.36

In 1951, at seventy-seven, Helen McCrae's morning drives with JMJ were still her 'only pleasure'; but a few months later his health failed, he lost weight and had an unspecified operation.37 In July 1952 Helen learned of her beloved friend's death at the age of eighty-two: 'I'm glad for him—he has never been like an old man—he had so many interests. For 25 years he has looked after me. I feel quite lost.' She had been out driving with him just a few hours earlier, when he seemed merely tired. Helen could not believe he was gone: 'knowing JM was like knowing half a dozen men. I never knew which one would turn up'. She could not believe she had lost him: 'I got into the habit of depending on him for everything.' She felt like an 'abandoned woman'—'no car tooting every morning at 10 o'clock. I'm at the meaningless stage', 'I do not know any of the ways of old women. I can't sit still and knit or play bridge or gossip'. She hated change and felt far too vulnerable for the modern world.38

Six months after JMJ's death, Helen McCrae reported that her 'walking days seem to be over. I'm always getting lost', doubtless due to her deteriorating eye-sight. Instead she boarded trams to the terminus and back, always sitting outside and enjoying the views. Helen also found a new friend of the younger generation in JMJ's daughter-in-law, Christine Joshua, aged thirty-five, who took to calling on her. Helen's generous cousin Margaret Outhwaite sent her a highly valued gift of £100, instead of leaving it in her will. Margaret took Helen out driving once a week, recognising that after JMJ's death Helen was 'nearly at the end of her tether'. She desperately missed him: 'this last horrible year has made me realize how frightfully thoughtful he was of me.' But so many of her generation of old friends were now 'ghosts' and so few left: 'I feel quite out of place in the world as it is now.'39 She found it hard to accept being very old by herself.

Helen's eyes deteriorated even more rapidly in her seventies. In 1949 Helen confessed to Hugh she was 'so depressed because of my eyes... I've been down and out and haunted by black devils and with no one to buck me up'. The following year Helen reminded Hugh that when he wrote to her in pencil she could not make out a word: 'I think everyone should die before Old Age overtakes 'em. That is unless you have money to help you and good health.' Helen's health problems were intensified by recurrent mental depression as her eyesight deteriorated. Depression descended after she was knocked down by a car in 1950, suffering concussion and delayed shock, though no one knew for three days: 'I was deep down in the slough of Despond... Next time I hope the old friend does the job properly.' Helen's mental depression increased as she aged, just as it did for Hugh, but its intensity varied: 'it's such a slippery place. I live in fear of sinking back down again.' At the age of seventy-seven her eyes seemed to deteriorate week by week, so much so that she would bump into people when she ventured out.40

Helen McCrae's fear of increasing loss of sight and ultimate blindness naturally intensified her loneliness and depression: she often referred to herself as an outcast or a 'square peg', 'I am too old to readjust my life'. When Helen felt better she valued her 'blessed singleness' and time alone, but her increasing bouts of depression intensified her isolation. During the war she saw none of her family for three years, and her isolation increased with passing years. When Hugh repeated his invitation to join him in Sydney in 1944 she reminded him of her need for independence, though she did not mention her fear of becoming a housekeeper again:

It would be too much of a wrench—an uprooting at my old age—I mean after being alone for 17 years. I'd never fit in anywhere. All this time I have never done any housekeeping. I've forgotten how to cook or run a flat. If I'd gone to Sydney straight away when George died [in 1927] it would have been easier. Your letter tantalises me and the children sound enchanting... It is 7 years since I have seen you or Winifred [their sister Mrs Erasmus Bligh]... I have lost my initiative.41

Following a funeral in 1945 Helen McCrae told Hugh: 'I find it fatal to look back, the only way for me is to live one day at a time—as I am too frightened to look ahead and too much time to think about it. I am sorry for all of us and the Gordon curse of loneliness.'A year later she observed: 'I'm not a mixer. I'm too old to make new friends... I've been twenty years living alone and now I'll have to always be alone.' After a desolate Easter in 1947 Helen regretted 'that is the worst of outliving your allotted span—all my woman friends died before loneliness set in'.42 In 1947 she told Hugh she would keep going as long as he was alive, but 'I don't belong to anyone. I have no children'. Helen wrote that she would feel more secure if she had a poison pill like the soldiers, in case life became too intolerable. She felt desolate with fear as the future loomed, 'scarcely anyone of my generation is left'.43

Helen McCrae's fear of the implications of her advancing years and declining health haunted her for the thirty years from her father's death in 1927 to her own death in 1961, at the advanced age of eighty-seven. In 1954 Helen McCrae reached the landmark age of eighty, marked by ever more rapid decline of her eyesight, and other serious ailments, including deafness, high blood pressure and poor balance. The oculists explained that the rate of deterioration in her sight depended on her general health, but there was little they could do to prevent inevitable blindness. By now Helen could scarcely see to read or write. She became very ill but was so reclusive that no one knew for some time, and then Christine Joshua called with violets and Margaret Outhwaite took her to a concert. Helen needed considerable 'cold courage' to stand up to life and maintain 'a stiff upper lip' in extreme old age, accepting the bad with the good, as JMJ had done. In her eighties Helen depended almost entirely on her radio for communication, as she could no longer read books or small print. She was often entirely alone for a fortnight at a time, and her inability to read was 'hell'.44

From the age of eighty, however, Helen seemed to reach a greater degree of acquiescence in old age. With extreme age came recurring reminiscences of her youth, friends and family long dead. At times Helen seemed envious of the advantages of her father and brother in old age. They had families and grandchildren to bring company, support, and, in Hugh's case, even accommodation. George, in particular, had excellent health until extreme old age: he was never bored, as Helen must often have been, and enjoyed the visits of numerous interesting men. He could do everything he chose right up to his 94th year. She recalled in vivid detail the deaths of both parents, and the suicide of her sister Dorothy in 1937. Last but not least were the memories of many friends, mostly long dead, especially John M. Joshua. With increasing years came acceptance of her own death, though she did not dwell on it, but hoped it would not be too long in coming:

The thought of the Q [Kew] cemetery and being put in a box and buried in the ground was so gruesome—turning quickly, in the twinkling of an eye, into a neat little pile of nice clean ashes and being scattered in the air to fly about with the butterflies, well, it is not frightening.45

After her eightieth birthday Helen especially envied Hugh McCrae his ability to read books while she was entirely dependent on the wireless to take her 'out of herself'. In 1955 she suffered a further serious setback when she was again knocked down by a car—this time by a hit and run driver, and taken to casualty at the Alfred Hospital, followed by four months in a leg brace. She concluded her account of the accident: 'But my eyes are worse than ever. These things will happen.' Helen seemed more resigned to the perils of old age than a decade earlier but the car accident took a further toll of her eyes, so that her nephew George now had to read Hugh's letters aloud to her. On Boxing Day 1955 Helen complained to Hugh, 'I can't write letters any more. I can't see what I have written. I'll be quite out of touch in future. It frightens me. Sorry to write such a miserable scrawl'. Indeed Helen's few subsequent letters were written poorly in pencil. She was sad that she would never see her first great-niece Katharine. In her final letter to Hugh in 1957 Helen expressed her frustration at 'trying to get used to being very old by myself'. She concluded: 'I think of you always.'46 Hugh's death in February 1958 must have hit her hard: the vital correspondence between brother and sister ceased forever after thirty years, when it had often provided a life-line for Helen.

Helen McCrae survived her beloved brother by three years, dying at the age of eighty-seven. Two almost illegible letters from Helen to her niece Honey Cowper in 1959 reveal a little of her lonely life. Her doctor called twice a week, when they had morning coffee together. She still had family support in extreme old age and was fortunate that her relatives persisted, despite her frequent obstinate rejections of overtures. Margaret Outhwaite still took her for weekly drives and encouraged her to seek foot treatment, in the hope she would venture out more. Helen's generous niece Honey Cowper suggested that Helen engage someone to help her for an hour each day, to do the shopping, some washing and cleaning, if she would not accept invitations to stay in Sydney. But Helen evidently ignored this sensible suggestion of domiciliary care, presumably due to financial concerns and passionate protection of her privacy. Claire Gordon, another niece, who lived close to Helen in South Yarra, visited her aunt as often as her busy life allowed. Claire offered advice to Honey at first-hand after visiting Helen, probably in 1958–59:

She's really very blind now, much too blind to be by herself, and trying to cook and do her own shopping... Helen hates people doing things for her, but its really becoming necessary—she's also worrying me a bit by talking in a peculiar way about the queer things she says she sees, lines of eyes watching her from the wall... The thing is, Helen is so much alone, she can't go much further than the shops now, and the rest of the time just sits in her room.47

The evidence for Helen's final two years is scant. It seems that she insisted on staying in her own two rooms in South Yarra, almost to the end. Claire admitted that 'she's a difficult old thing sometimes, but I'm sorry to hear she is getting so shaky'. Helen finally agreed to move to Honey Cowper's home in Sydney towards the end. No doubt Helen McCrae welcomed her own approaching death in 1961, having lost her eyesight, the room of her own, and the independence she prized above all.

### Notes

1 Cowper, 'McCrae, Georgiana', pp. 160–1.

2 Niall, pp. 219–47.

3 ibid.

4 Georgiana McCrae to Edie Anderson, 1884–1890 [1889], McCrae Papers, SLV, MS 9162, box 223.

5 ibid., 26 Feb. 1890; Niall, p. 257.

6 Cowper, 'McCrae, George Gordon', pp. 126–7; Wilde, Hooton and Andrews, _Oxford Companion to Australian Literature_ , p. 487.

7 Helen to Hugh McCrae, 1925, McCrae Papers, SLV, MS 12831, box 3784/7; George Gordon McCrae to Hugh McCrae, June 1925, 12 June 1926, ibid., boxes 3746/1, 3735/1.

8 McCrae family news-cuttings, ibid., MS 12018; MS 12831, box 2519/2.

9 Helen to Hugh McCrae, 31 Dec. 1926, Feb. 1927, ibid., box 3657/10; Helen to Honey Cowper, 15 Aug. 1927, ibid., box 3676/11.

10 Ernest Watt to Helen McCrae, 21 Sept. 1927, ibid., box 3672/4; Helen to Hugh McCrae, 29 April 1955, ibid., box 3675/7(2).

11 Wilde, Hooton and Andrews _, Oxford Companion to Australian Literature_ , p. 488; Rutledge, _ADB_.

12 ibid.

13 Helen McCrae to Hugh McCrae [hereafter Helen to Hugh], 26 Dec. 1943, 30 Sept. 1944, SLV, McCrae Papers, MS 12831, boxes 3735/4, 3784/9.

14 Hugh McCrae to Peter Hopegood, 13 Jan. 1944; and to H. F. Chaplin, 1947, in Fitzgerald, pp. 142, 177.

15 Hugh McCrae's correspondence with Beatrice Davis, Winifred Bligh, Kenneth Mackenzie, 1950–1, in ibid., pp. 207–10.

16 Hugh to Helen McCrae, 1951, SLV, McCrae Papers, MS 12831, box 3785/3.

17 Nettie Palmer to Honey Cowper, 25 Nov. 1951, ibid., box 3681/12.

18 Hugh to Helen McCrae, 28 Sept. 1952, ibid., box 3785/3.

19 Hugh McCrae to Tom Inglis Moore, n.d.; to Norman Lindsay, 3 Mar. 1954; to K. S. Prichard, April 1954, in Fitzgerald, pp. 229, 233–4.

20 Hugh to Helen McCrae, 20 Dec. 1955, McCrae Papers, SLV, MS 12831, box 3677/10; Hugh to Guy Howarth, 12 July 1954, in Fitzgerald, p. 235.

21 Hugh to Norman Lindsay and Tom Inglis Moore, 1957, ibid., p. 238.

22 Hugh to Nettie Palmer, 30 Aug. 1954, Palmer Papers, NLA, MS 1174.

23 Hugh to Helen McCrae, 27 Aug. 1957, McCrae Papers, SLV, MS 12831, box 3657/10. McCrae family correspondence between Helen and Hugh and their family is located at MS 12831 unless otherwise cited.

24 Winifred Bligh to Helen McCrae, n.d., [1957–8], ibid., box 3786/2, 3746/4.

25 Mary Melville to niece, Honey Cowper, n.d., ibid., box 3676/13.

26 Helen to Hugh, n.d., ibid., box 3675/8(L).

27 ibid., 3 April [1931], box 3784/7.

28 ibid., [Nov. 1944], box 3735/4.

29 ibid., 4 Jan., 23 May 1945; 23 Apr. 1946, box 3735/4–5.

30 Helen to sister, Winifred Bligh, [early 1940s], ibid., box 3675/9.

31 Helen to Hugh, and Honey Cowper, 20 May 1944, ibid., box 3735/4.

32 ibid., 16 Aug. 1948, box 3735/5.

33 Helen to sister, Winifred Bligh, early 1940s, ibid., box 3675/9.

34 Helen to Hugh, 10 Nov. 1945, 12 Nov. 1947, ibid., box 3735/4–5.

35 ibid., n.d. [1943], box 3735/5.

36 ibid., 19 July 1944, 26 May 1945, box 3784/9.

37 ibid., Sept. 1951, box 3735/6; 8 Oct. 1951, box 3675/7.

38 ibid., 13 July, 25 July, 4 Aug., 26 Aug. 1952, boxes 3675/7, 3785/1

39 ibid., 17 May, 6 Feb., 4 Aug., 8 Sept. 1953, boxes 3675/7, 3735/6.

40 ibid., 8 July 1950, Sept. 1951, boxes 3735/5–6, 3785/1.

41 ibid., 26 Dec. 1943, 1 Jan. 1944, box 3735/4.

42 ibid., 5 Mar. 1945, June 1946, 7 April 1947, box 3785/1.

43 ibid., 1947, box 3735/5.

44 ibid., 2 July, 4 Jan., 19 Sept. and 2 Oct. 1954, boxes 3735/6, 3735/7, 3735/5, 3675/7, 3676/11.

45 ibid., 29, 14 April, 3 May 1955; 13 Mar. 1957, box 3675/7.

46 ibid., 15 May, 20 Oct., 26 Dec. 1955; 21 Sept. 1956; 13 Mar. 1957, ibid., boxes 3785/1, 3784/6, 3675/7.

47 Claire Gordon to Honey Cowper [1958–9], ibid., box 374614.
**Part Two
Hope for the Future, 1945–1980**

## 6

## The Brotherhood of St Laurence: Housing the Elderly from 1945

After the federal government introduced old age pensions in 1908 the Australian press was largely silent about older people until the later 1940s. They were only mentioned in a patronising paragraph or two when they reached their hundredth birthday or in budget debates, which often involved pension cuts. Even in the grim 1930s the views of the various pensioners' associations were rarely reported, and then only to highlight their neediness and disunity. The press silence reflected a seemingly more general community detachment from the elderly: they were even described by the press in Victoria as the 'forgotten people', borrowing Menzies' famous term.1 Moreover, the federal government was exceedingly reluctant to engage with the problems of older people. Councillor A.J. Steele, Mayor of Sandringham, noted in 1950: '[the federal government] should face up to the aged people problem... This is supposed to be the day of the Welfare State.'2

As Stuart Macintyre notes, 'In return for the hardship and danger of the war, the Labor government undertook far-reaching reform', creating a Department of Post-War Reconstruction to plan the new order. In February 1943 Labor Treasurer Ben Chifley, revealed ambitious plans for a welfare state and 'a better future for the world', combined however with vital increases in taxation to fund the war effort. 'The enhanced powers of the wartime Commonwealth would carry over to peacetime, with regulation of the economy for industrial expansion, immigration, maintenance of full employment, housing, health, education and social welfare.'3 Geoffrey Bolton applauds the 'atmosphere of intellectual excitement seldom encountered in Canberra', with influences including Harold Laski, Keynes and Franklin Roosevelt's 'New Deal'.4

But older people in Australia received fewer benefits from the new welfare state than other groups in society. A 'National Welfare Fund' was created to deal with unemployment, sickness and old age, with funds drawn from consolidated revenue rather than a contributory insurance scheme. Two-thirds of this new fund was actually financed by the working classes as the minimum taxable income was substantially reduced. Maternity, funeral benefits and child endowment were all drawn from it. As Brian Dickey wryly noted, 'Then there came a small gesture towards the self-respect of aged pensioners', who were promised £10 to help avoid a pauper's burial. The aged pension was increased several times, from a pitiful twenty shillings in December 1940 to 42s/6d by 1949, mostly linked to the government statistician's cost of living index. The pressure for the abolition of the means test revived after the war. In response the weekly income limit was increased from 12s/6d to £1 and the property limit from £400 to £650. Fewer old people protested after 1945 about the stigma of charity attached to the pension.5

After a silence of nearly forty years the gradual awakening of community interest in the elderly from 1945 was remarkable. In the decade after the Second World War Victoria became the pioneer state in its efforts to arouse the public conscience about the appalling plight of many elderly people. New South Wales responded to this crisis seven or eight years later, and other states were even slower. Victoria's leading role may partly be explained by its strong recovery from the worldwide depression of the 1930s, its rapid industrial development after the war and its substantial share of post-war European immigrants to Australia.

Having largely overlooked the elderly in public discourse for forty years, the Australian community now faced a cumulative set of serious problems made immeasurably worse by two world wars and a harsh economic depression. There had been little opportunity or resources for building vital infrastructure for the elderly, such as housing, hospitals and benevolent homes. Moreover, after 1945 priority was given to returned soldiers and young families.

There was a slow awakening of public concern in Victoria about the myriad social and economic problems left by war and depression and their disproportionate impact on the elderly poor. Several powerful organisations and individuals played a role in demanding slum abolition, led by the Brotherhood of St Laurence and by Oswald Barnett, a devout Methodist and committed social reformer. The Victorian press also made a significant contribution, led by the _Argus_ and the _Herald_ newspapers. In 1945 talented reporters such as John Hetherington championed the valiant work for the elderly undertaken by the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Salvation Army. A number of caring state politicians on both sides played a significant part, as did individual police and clergymen. Compassion and shock were common responses to the seemingly intractable problems among the indigent aged. The Victorian government was slow to respond to the crisis, but the Commonwealth government and other states were even slower.

The crisis for the elderly from 1945 was due chiefly to the legacy of war and depression, but there was also an alleged new demographic 'time-bomb' to consider. From 1947 Australians slowly acknowledged a phenomenon of increasing importance over the next half century, though it was as yet far more urgent in Europe. In October 1950 the journalist John Hetherington put it forcefully in the _Herald_ , under the banner headline, 'Is Old Age a Crime?' He argued that the 'problem' of old age was increasing in developed countries because the human life-span was now prolonged by advances in medical science, infant welfare and sanitation. The proportion of the elderly in the population was growing annually, creating a massive challenge for the social system in the future: 'We are on trial and the time for action is running out.'6

This stirring newspaper rhetoric about a mythical demographic time bomb in the 1940s and 1950s was remarkably similar to that of today, though the scale of the current crisis is infinitely greater. Indeed in the mid-twentieth century, the challenge of demographic ageing, which had increased from the 1880s to 1946, declined for the next two decades. Journalists in the early 1950s did not know, of course, that the rise in life expectancy from 1946 to the 1960s would be more than compensated by the baby boom from about 1946–61 and by a high immigration intake.7 From 1948 onwards the _Herald_ repeated its warnings 'that Australia was going to get older and older', and that frail elderly people were being kept alive longer without adequate social support.8 Though this demographic panic was, in hindsight, seriously misplaced in post-war Australia, it nevertheless gave a much-needed boost to the cause of elderly people and illuminated their plight.

The _Argus_ and the _Herald_ newspapers did a splendid job in raising Victorians' awareness of the severe problems facing older people, which had been ignored for forty years. Following two world wars and a terrible depression, the working classes of Australia in the 1940s—like those in England—were generally impoverished. Within their communities older people were conspicuous as a large group in acute need, though the levels of hardship varied considerably. The issue was vividly presented in a series of leading articles in 1945 in the _Argus_ that declared that the community had 'shamefully neglected its duty to the lonely aged': it was time the conscience of the community was aroused. The _Argus_ appealed for 'a charter of freedom and justice' for old people suffering tragic disabilities of class, frailty and poverty. The elderly were an integral part of Australia's social, spiritual and economic life, so 'let us do them justice'.9

However, the press and the advocates for the elderly acknowledged that the crisis facing older people was so acute and the obstacles so great that it must be tackled slowly in several stages, given very scarce resources. The most immediate and urgent need in 1945 was generally agreed to be for institutional accommodation for frail and indigent old people. The two major benevolent institutions in the Melbourne metropolitan area had been established decades earlier, and the ancient buildings needed replacement, as did those in Sydney. The bleak institutional atmosphere gave little privacy and married couples were still separated. Sir Herbert Olney, President of Mount Royal Benevolent Home, described the situation as deplorable, with waiting lists of many hundreds and the most acute staff shortage ever. One large ward of a hundred beds had to be closed and hundreds of frail old men sent home. Much the same was true of the second institution, the Melbourne Benevolent Home at Cheltenham, where ninety beds were unavailable.10

In 1948 and 1949 journalists in Victoria frequently described the elderly as 'the forgotten people'. The _Herald_ applied maximum pressure 'to mobilize the goodwill of Melbourne citizens' and the support of reluctant governments to address the problems of older people. Sir Albert Dunstan, Victorian Health Minister, acknowledged that 10 000 aged and infirm people in Victoria lacked adequate shelter and care; he called a conference of representatives of charitable organisations to discuss their 'desperate plight'. The outcome was a request to the Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, for the loan of eight wards of the Caulfield Repatriation Hospital as a third major Melbourne institutional home for the frail aged. Chifley initially refused, preferring federal non-involvement in the crisis of the elderly in 1948. On the second request Chifley reluctantly agreed to loan just five wards of Caulfield instead of the requested eight. In 1949 major plans were at last agreed upon to build or extend large new benevolent institutions for the elderly outside Melbourne, including a new 'home' at Geelong and an extension at Ballarat, when funding permitted.11

But by 1951 the _Herald_ reported that little had been achieved for the frail aged, as past warnings had been ignored and growing old remained 'a harsh business' in Victoria. It was easy to blame governments but the entire community was also at fault—'this is everybody's business.' Reverend Gerard Kennedy Tucker, founder of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, had sounded warnings in the press and elsewhere for years, but complained that he was never heeded. Every week seventy or eighty old people begged for admission to Mount Royal Benevolent Home but only three or four could be admitted, if that. In 1954 the Hospitals and Charities Commission complained that Victoria still had only half the institutional beds it needed to care for the frail aged. Around 5 per cent of people of pensionable age needed care and accommodation in institutions; there were about 11 000 such people in Victoria, but only 5000 beds. Under pressure, the Hospitals and Charities Commission at last agreed to complete the large Geelong institution with the 200 beds promised in 1949, and added a further eighty beds at Mount Royal.12 This Commission initiative was in part a response to the huge disappointment expressed by the large benevolent institutions when the frail elderly were excluded from the funding provided by the 1954 _Aged Persons Homes Act_.

### Housing 'The Forgotten People': Growing Pressure for Action after 1945

The most significant post-war social problem for older people, in terms of sheer numbers, was that so many were living in deplorable housing in the squalid slums of central Melbourne, where general slum clearance was urgently needed. Renting by older people was common in most urban areas, especially in St Kilda, Malvern and Prahran in central Melbourne. Across Victoria 11 per cent of older people had to share a room in a boarding house. Many older people with modest means were reduced to dire straits by the acute housing shortage and the increase in rents and living costs. Even those who might normally manage for themselves, if decent accommodation was available at reasonable cost, were currently helpless victims struggling to survive. However, this major crisis of aged poverty in central Melbourne should not be overstated for Victoria as a whole, especially in rural areas, where nearly three-quarters of people over fifty-five owned their own houses.13

Since the later years of the 1940s demands had been escalating for government action to provide decent housing for able-bodied older people, especially those currently homeless or living bleak lives in inner-city slums. This issue attracted attention from individuals on both sides of politics, but not initially the politicians in power. In 1948 the Labor politician Stan Keon condemned three years' failure of policy and action on the problem of housing the elderly, which was rapidly becoming a 'grave scandal'. Keon was a capable Richmond man and an idealistic Catholic, who was a colourful leading figure in Victorian politics and a staunch anti-communist. He argued that Melbourne had provided no new homes for the aged in sixty years. Yet nothing had been achieved in the previous three years because of the acute shortage of staff, funding, building materials and labour. Sick old people in impoverished inner industrial areas were dying for lack of attention: 'The battle of life was beyond them.' They lived in cheerless rooms at exorbitant rates, on a totally inadequate pension. Many took to their beds and died from starvation and lack of support.14 Other politicians sought to raise the profiles of slum clearance and housing for the elderly in the early 1950s, while recognising the tough challenge of arousing Victorians on the twin issues of slums and old people.15

Reverend Oswald Barnett, a Methodist social reformer, used the _Herald_ to condemn the city slums as breeding grounds for disease and death for old people. Limited available funding could not cover competing claims for housing, especially with continued shortage of funds, labour and building materials.16 Moreover, priority was still given in the early 1950s to returned soldiers, young families and new European immigrants. The political advantage of giving priority to slum housing renewal was that it assisted the entire community, not only older people. The cost of providing adequate accommodation for the elderly poor was so great that the demand for substantial federal government intervention and funding escalated. There was increasing pressure on the Commonwealth government to use its substantial powers to aid the elderly, especially in providing suitable public housing.17 Councillor George Dobson agreed that the homeless aged were 'our forgotten people': the public conscience must be raised to improve the deplorable living conditions of thousands of elderly citizens living in squalid slums. Such pressure ultimately led to the vitally important _Aged Persons Homes Act_ of 1954, as we shall see.

Meanwhile, from 1950 onwards the press, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and other philanthropic organisations stressed the need to replace slum housing with specially designed flats and small cottages for elderly people. K. Murray Forster, an architect, pressed for demolition of slums in favour of multi-storey flats and small single storey housing for older people currently living in appalling conditions. He called for the combined efforts of governments, churches, the Brotherhood, and private enterprise to build appropriate accommodation. The _Argus_ charged that Australia was 'one of Earth's most backward nations' in this regard, far behind the world's leaders in Scandinavia and Britain, where flats and small houses for old people were being created in new housing estates.18

The prolonged debate on housing for the elderly included suggestions about existing initiatives which deserved to be viewed as models for the future. Three pioneer groups offered outstanding housing models for older people capable of looking after themselves, as a good compromise between independence and institutionalisation. The Freemasons' Houses of Victoria were excellent, but they were restricted to members of the Victorian Masonic Lodge with ten years' service. The Old Colonists Homes in Fitzroy, North Melbourne, had more general application as a model, offering small cottages for 120 older people who paid £500 to live there, for life, in enclosed grounds. But they did not provide a hospital wing or hostel accommodation for those who became frail.19

### The Brotherhood of St Laurence and its Carrum Downs Model for the Elderly Poor

The most influential and durable model of housing for the elderly was the remarkable Carrum Downs housing settlement, created by the Brotherhood of St Laurence in the early 1950s. This chapter will focus on the Brotherhood's contribution to housing the elderly because they provided an enterprising housing model which was widely followed and responded flexibly to federal government funding initiatives after 1954. They also left a large and rich archive in the State Library of Victoria. Gerard Kennedy Tucker (1885–1974), an Anglican clergyman, had founded a community of serving priests in Melbourne with the title of the Brotherhood of St Laurence in 1930. Father Tucker had long wanted to serve the inner-city poor, and he established a hostel for homeless, unemployed men and their families at Carrum Downs, now in the southern suburbs of Melbourne, on the Dandenong Highway. This settlement had limited success in the 1930s and failed when the war effort largely ended unemployment. In 1947 the Brotherhood ceased to be a religious community, but continued its devoted campaign to improve the welfare and housing of the elderly, the poor and the disadvantaged.20

From 1945 Father Tucker turned the Brotherhood's attention from the needs of the unemployed to those of aged pensioners, revitalising the campaign for slum clearance and public housing from 1947 onwards. His campaigns for housing old people were inspired by his almost mystical Christian faith and 'passionate belief in the dignity of the disadvantaged'. Unlike the Charity Organisation Society, Father Tucker and the Brotherhood did not discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving, attributing problematic behaviour to social and environmental forces rather than failures of character. His 1956 booklet, 'The best is yet to be', revealed his vision for aged care: he aimed to empower older people by offering security and opportunities for activity and maximum independence. He argued that extending the contribution of old people to the community would reduce any subsequent burden in welfare costs. Father Tucker inspired affection and admiration, but also criticism that he was demanding, volatile and committed the Brotherhood to too many projects. If true, these criticisms were more than balanced by his extraordinary achievements. Father Tucker was a brilliant publicist with remarkable communication skills and his regular radio programme and press contributions disseminated the Brotherhood's message widely. He was criticised for being a 'doer rather than a systematic thinker', but both were needed. His fund raising abilities were formidable, and vital at a time when government subsidies were meagre.21

The original Carrum Downs settlement for unemployed men was transformed into an effective pioneer village for older people from 1945, which grew out of Father Tucker's original campaign for the abolition of the inner city slums of Melbourne. He recognised that the war had placed intense pressure on inner-city housing, allowing landlords to increase rents unfairly and to intimidate unwanted elderly tenants. Meagre pensions left tiny margins for high rents, and some old people were bullied into moving without alternative accommodation.

From 1945 Carrum Downs was redesigned as housing for active, independent old people who were mentally alert and in need of a refuge and security. By the early 1950s Carrum Downs offered cottages with small gardens, initially for eighty old people, mostly pensioners, at a cost of six shillings weekly. The tenants were encouraged to participate in community activities, help run the settlement, and care for their own cottages. The Brotherhood engaged in energetic fundraising to subsidise the settlement in these early years, assisted by a substantial legacy of £13 000 from a generous benefactor in 1948. This legacy paid for accommodation for the frail aged in a hostel wing known as Collins Court (after its benefactor). Initially it had twelve bed-sitting rooms with meals provided and a sick bay with a trained nurse. Collins Court was a vitally important model as the first 'hostel' for the frail aged in Victoria. By 1958 the decision was taken to consolidate Carrum Downs with a total capacity of 180 elderly people, including seventy-three single cottages, sixty-eight double cottages and twenty-nine Collins Court bed-sitting rooms for the aged infirm. Carrum Downs also now included a shop, a library, a chapel, and a handicraft room. The Brotherhood's Social Service Bureau offered advice and information and the Coolibah Club provided meals and companionship.22

Father Tucker and the Brotherhood aimed to demonstrate how the severe problems of poverty, loneliness and lack of accommodation in old age could be tackled on a small scale, to show the government and the public how it might be achieved more widely throughout the community. They hoped their efforts would stimulate wider public and political acceptance of their model and encourage government subsidies. As Carrum Downs was the first such settlement in Victoria it generated substantial public interest, drawing 2430 visitors in 1955–6. During the 1950s Father Tucker accepted invitations to address many other groups keen to learn how to create their own effective housing settlements for the elderly, as at the Ferntree Gully Aged People's Home in 1953.23 The Brotherhood was seen by all as 'breaking new ground in its approach to housing for the elderly'. In 1953–5 alone seventeen groups planning such settlements for the elderly came to Carrum Downs to learn how to do it.24

### Applications for Carrum Downs: An Overwhelming Response

In 1951 Father Tucker advertised in the Melbourne _Herald_ and appealed on the radio for applications for Carrum Downs, emphasising that pensioners would pay only six shillings weekly for their cottages.25 But Father Tucker vastly underestimated the overwhelming response from 'the forgotten people' over the next three years. The unexpected volume of letters of application from old people in dire need was distressing for Father Tucker and his staff. By 1954 there was a cumulative backlog of many thousands of letters of application. Father Tucker and his staff were obliged to compile lists of categories of applicants with 'points ratings', calculated accorded to urgency of need, suitability for residency, and length of time already waiting. Father Tucker's official replies rarely survive, and mostly offered a stereotyped response—'very sorry, can do nothing'—explaining that there was a huge waiting list of several years standing. Occasionally applicants were given some hope, suggesting they visit Carrum Downs. A fortunate minority was placed on the long waiting list, but many would die before they reached the top of the list.26

The thousands of poignant letters requesting accommodation at Carrum Downs from 1951 to 1954 are heartbreaking. They bear testimony to the loneliness, despair, abject poverty, breakdown of family relationships, and eviction from boarding houses suffered by the elderly poor. Applications required medical particulars of physical and mental health and noted harshly that 'mental cases' were not eligible. Applicants also had to advise whether they were active or incapacitated, and provide the sources and value of any income, land and buildings.27

High on Father Tucker's points system was 'urgency of need', but most applicants rated high on this criterion, as the following examples will demonstrate. The most pressing problems of men and women varied substantially; the female applicants seemed more desperate and outnumbered the men about three to one. Male applicants emphasised the personal misery caused by the severe shortage of accommodation and excessive rental charges for squalid rooms in boarding houses, leaving little money for food, gas, clothes, and medical necessities. Two applications from men can stand for many. Four elderly male inmates of a boarding house at West Brunswick sought help in 1955 because they lived in appalling conditions, three or four to a room, but were still paying five guineas each a week. They had little money left to buy wholesome food, warmth and decent bedding. The second example, Thomas Renny, was an 86-year-old pensioner who had rented a furnished room in a boarding house in Fitzroy for eleven years, but the owner had recently died and the house was to be sold. Thomas was told he must leave in a week, but at his age he was not fit enough to walk endlessly on a fruitless quest for another rented room, when they were in such short supply.28

The female applicants' letters were both more numerous and more emotional in expressing the horror of their plight. Unlike the men, emphasis was placed on their desperate need to escape miserable family situations. Mrs E. Lord sent two letters of despair to Father Tucker in 1952 and 1953. She was a widowed pensioner of seventy years, whose son and daughter sadly had 'no room for Mum in their lives'—indeed she had no address for her daughter. Mrs Lord's husband had died from cancer four years earlier, leaving her to earn a precarious living as a housekeeper, which gave 'free' board and lodging. However, she would be unable to continue such work due to chronic bronchitis and cataracts, which would blind her eventually. The situation was making her 'desperate at the thought of what is to become of me as I get older'. If Mrs Lord became ill, she had nowhere to go and no-one to help. She had her aged pension and wanted to live in peace and happiness with the community at Carrum Downs. If they could not help, she would have to rent a tiny bedroom in a boarding house: 'what a tragedy Old Age is when one has no one.'29

Elizabeth Sprague also told an unhappy story, but this was a rare case where Father Tucker noted on her application form that she was on the waiting list. Her devoted husband had died suddenly two months earlier, late in 1950, after thirty-eight 'perfect' years together. Elizabeth had no family to help her except the sister with whom she now lived, but it was an extremely unhappy home: 'there is too much bickering to suit me, also far too much noise.' From her pension she paid her sister thirty shillings weekly, which included one meal daily. Unlike most other applicants, Elizabeth had actually visited Carrum Downs, which impressed her greatly. Her doctor vouched for her as a suitable tenant, mentally sound and physically capable of looking after herself.30

The saddest applications to Carrum Downs came from single and widowed women living in appalling accommodation in boarding houses in inner-city slum estates, often sharing rooms with several others. In many cases they were evicted when their slum houses were sold or demolished. Miss M.E. Laury wrote to Father Tucker from an East Ivanhoe boarding house in 1952: 'we have five people in my room here and I would dearly love a place to myself.' She was a confirmed Anglican, aged sixty-eight, capable of looking after herself, but longing for quiet in a lovely cottage. Sister Olive B. Barke, a 73-year-old retired, healthy army nurse, had endured five moves in six years in isolated Elmore, near Echuca. Each time she restored order to a rented place, it was sold with little or no warning. Her present rental was to be sold in three months, and she could afford twenty-five shillings rent for a cottage.31

Miss Laury and Sister Barke were healthy applicants who may have had more hope of acceptance than frail people such as Mrs Grant, aged seventy-six and her husband, six years older. Their rented house was sold and the new owner had evicted them; both had arthritis and were partly crippled. But the Brotherhood's focus was on the active elderly and their hostel accommodation for the frail was limited. Father Tucker's reply mentioned a three-year waiting list and suggested they try the Old Colonists Homes (where they were unlikely to have better luck as the Homes had no hostel accommodation). Mrs M. Lawson was a pensioner of seventy-six with poor health and weak sight: 'I cannot find anywhere to live... People who let rooms do not want such tenants.' The saddest letter came from Mary O'Neill at Kew Mental Hospital. She desperately needed a home: 'this is a Cruel Place. Please help me.' She had earlier written several letters that had been intercepted by Kew Mental Hospital authorities.32

### The Impact of the _Aged Persons Homes Act_ of 1954

The Menzies federal government's landmark _Aged Persons Homes Act_ of 1954 was the outcome of intense pressure from the Brotherhood, the press, the community and state governments. The Commonwealth government agreed to subsidise approved religious and charitable organisations on a £ for £ basis, to build small cottages and flats for the aged in need. The government initially granted £1½ million in its 1954 legislation which included £37 000 for the Brotherhood of St Laurence, in recognition of its efforts at Carrum Downs in the early 1950s. This initiative was signalled in advance in the August 1954 federal budget, shortly before the publication of the Hutchinson Report, which belatedly recommended the legislation. In 1960 the Commonwealth government increased the subsidy to £2 for £1, and also allowed state and local governments to participate. Victoria (but not NSW) also provided further financial subsidies. Between 1954 and 1970 the _Aged Persons Homes Act_ enabled accommodation to be provided for about 30 000 older people—a substantial achievement.33

The scheme set up by the 1954 Act was potentially generous for the voluntary organisations who ultimately became the owners of the homes, especially after subsidy rates were increased from 1960. In the 1950s the Commonwealth government evidently believed it was more effective to subsidise extra accommodation for the deserving elderly rather than to increase aged pensions. The emphasis was on 'suitable' home-like accommodation for fit elderly people who could walk and needed no nursing care, to encourage independence from institutional surroundings.34 It was a vital stimulus to the development of settlements for older people throughout Australia, but the scheme had two serious limitations. Funding excluded the frail and bed-ridden elderly and the large benevolent institutions. Moreover, it was weighted heavily in favour of older people with financial means, as capital 'contributions' were often required from prospective tenants in order to meet the £ for £ requirement.35 Not all organisations were as altruistic as the Brotherhood, which aimed to fund a proportion of pensioner applications from its own fundraising efforts.

The _Aged Persons Homes Act_ of 1954 was a godsend for the Brotherhood, which had learned valuable lessons from the early Carrum Downs experiment. In future they aimed to balance the interests of poor pensioners more carefully against those of the more fortunate elderly financial contributors. The 1954 Act required that the Brotherhood match government grants, so they had to continue to raise funds from independent benefactors where possible. The Brotherhood's shock and distress at their manifest inability to satisfy the vast majority of applicants for Carrum Downs in the early 1950s led to greater caution in the management of their next project at the village of Lara, ten miles north of Geelong. In future the Brotherhood aimed to avoid raising false hopes from the best of motives. Applicants for cottages must now offer subsidies where possible, if they were not aged pensioners. It was essential that the Brotherhood maintain a careful check on their balance between poor pensioners and contributors prepared to donate £ for £ toward building cottages which the Brotherhood would inherit. The Brotherhood recognised at an early date that they must be adaptable and enterprising in response to federal government initiatives.

A sample of these later applications to Carrum Downs from 1954 reveals the early impact of the 1954 _Aged Persons Homes Act_. Male applicants were usually in a stronger position than women to offer donations, even though they were in a considerable minority numerically. The application from Mr E. Ellis in April 1954 was remarkable. Ellis was a widower of sixty-seven, 'fairly healthy and active but I am living entirely alone and the loneliness is getting me down'. He had been a successful builder and carpenter, but nobody wanted to employ a man of sixty-seven who could only do light jobs. He needed occupation and company in a community, so he offered Father Tucker a proposition. He would give Father Tucker the house he owned and lived in, worth £2350, in return for a small cabin, meals, company and unpaid employment at Carrum Downs in any useful capacity. Doubtless Ellis was accepted. Alexander Gary of Prahran also offered 'to pay to have a room put up', as he had to 'rough it' since his wife died. At seventy-five he was too old to make do: 'I have been asked to go, as the people I am with don't want to be bothered with me.' Josiah Ireson of Clifton Hill was also widowed, sad and frail at eighty-seven, but as a former builder he could offer substantial funds and some labour to Carrum Downs once he sold his house to his daughter.36

Only a few women had similar financial means to contribute to a Carrum Downs cottage. Miss M. Picken was a single woman of seventy-one, 'quite alone', a former office worker and active Presbyterian. She owned and lived in 'a shack' at Crib Point on the Mornington Peninsula. This was now very lonely and her nearest neighbours were undesirable alcoholics. Miss Picken was prepared to sell her property to pay towards the erection of a cottage at Carrum Downs (this financial information was underlined by Father Tucker). Miss Picken was fairly healthy and willing to serve the community, preferably by office work. Mrs V. Kirkham, a widow of sixty-one, had for years been a caretaker with 'free' board, but the house was to be sold. She was alone, and the security of a home at Carrum Downs in old age would be 'marvellous'. Mrs Kirkham recently had a bequest of £250 which she offered to the Brotherhood as a small donation which she hoped would allow her to be entered on the waiting list.37

The application from Mrs M. Gardner of Alexandra, aged seventy, was unusual, especially from a woman. She had been 'living here, there and everywhere with relations', but needed a cottage of her own—'I am in a position to build a comfy two roomed cottage with all conveniences, say up to £1,200', following her own plan. The cottage would be hers until her death, when it would become the property of the Brotherhood. Mrs Gardner needed assurance that she would be looked after and receive 'proper nursing attention' when required. While she was able she would do her own housework and have a vegetable garden, but she refused to live in a home plagued with mosquitoes.38 Her application was doubtless accepted.

In 1955 the Brotherhood's annual report announced that no further applications could be accepted for Carrum Downs, due to the overwhelming demand from poor old people unable to contribute, and the limited numbers so far willing and able to finance their own accommodation. By 1956–7 it was clear to the Brotherhood that the village settlement at Carrum Downs had reached its maximum desirable size. As more funds came in, older cottages would be renovated, with the help of an endowment scheme from Georges Department store. More important for the future was the need to develop other housing projects in different localities, where residents would continue to participate in running and management.39 But the commitment continued in principle that the Brotherhood's accommodation should be mainly for old people without assets. Carrum Downs remained a settlement primarily for the disadvantaged into the 1980s.40

### Father Tucker and the Creation of Lara as a Self-Funding Village for the Elderly

In 1959 Father Tucker, at the age of seventy-five, moved from Carrum Downs—where he had lived for ten years—to embark on another pioneering project in Geelong. He became the first resident of his new settlement for the elderly at the village of Lara, where forty acres of rural land were purchased. The opportunity was provided by an invitation from the Geelong diocese and local businessmen, with support from Geelong Grammar School, to develop a settlement for the elderly in the district, following the Carrum Downs model. This initiative was an effective response to the recently increased federal government subsidy in the _Aged Persons Homes Act_ from £1 to £2. A provisional committee was created and quickly raised £9000 from its associated benefactors, including £4693 from the school's annual fair. The first five houses cost an average £1839 each, including some funded by intending residents who matched the government subsidy. The Brotherhood itself donated the first two cottages when Lara was officially opened in 1959, including one for Father Tucker. By 1966 fifty cottages for active people had been built, and also Tucker Court, which included twelve flats, a kitchen, a communal dining room, and plans for an eight-bed sick bay. Weekly costs per resident were reduced by voluntary labour in cottage industry projects, including printing. The ultimate capacity of Lara was set at around two hundred residents.41

The Lara applications in the Brotherhood's files are very different from those for Carrum Downs nearly a decade earlier. They reflected both the increased Commonwealth subsidy and also the practical knowledge gained from the often heart-breaking Carrum Downs applications. The Brotherhood was adaptable and responsive to the federal government's challenge. Where Carrum Downs had attracted numerous poor old people from the inner-city slums, Lara was perhaps intended to cater to old people who were lower middle class in aspiration if not in origin. Tucker's letter in the _Age_ newspaper in 1959 had deliberately encouraged applications for Lara from 'younger old people' (over sixty) who were still very active. Some could not offer financial contributions. Mrs V. Lyons was aged sixty-one when she applied in May 1961. She was not penniless but lacked the funds to buy a home unit at current prices. Mrs Lyons was very active, but needed 'to look to the future for security, activity and interests'. She was evidently the kind of resident Father Tucker wanted, as he forwarded application forms and suggested she visit Lara. Some, like widowed Mrs J. Hogg, who was still only fifty-eight, healthy and energetic, but reluctant to 'gatecrash' her children's lives, were told to keep in touch when they reached sixty.42

Others who fitted Father Tucker's specifications regarding age, capacity and community interests, also offered financial contributions under Lara's 'Finance Scheme'. Harry Marshall's application for a single 'financial house' at Lara was accepted by Father Tucker in January 1960, with his payment of £784. Harry Marshall wanted to visit to make an inventory of necessary furniture and plan a tool-shed. He aimed to be very active both in his own garden and in the 'park nursery'. Harry was retiring from the radio corporation while he was still active. Miss Kay Kirby of East Prahran was a nurse aged seventy-one, still working but needing to retire soon. She had lived in her present rooms for thirty years but they were to be demolished for flats, so 'I have nowhere to go'. Though she was fit and healthy Miss Kirby now tired more easily. She had saved enough money to contribute to a flat or unit, prompting Father Tucker's reply that he could include her at Lara under the Finance Scheme if she contributed £800.43 Those unfortunate applicants who mentioned ill health or recent strokes were advised that Lara was for 'active, elderly people' and there was a long waiting list.

By the 1970s the Brotherhood's basic admission policy for Lara continued its priority to older people 'of low-income status', either in receipt of aged pensions or with insufficient assets to purchase alternative accommodation. They must also have sufficient social, physical and personal need to require such accommodation. Full aged pensioners would receive priority above those with greater income. A new Brotherhood settlement in Bendigo, St Laurence Court, funded jointly by the Brotherhood and the Bendigo diocese, was intended entirely for forty old people without sufficient means.44 The Brotherhood also established Sumner House in Fitzroy and Sambell Lodge in Clifton Hill as centres for the frail aged dislodged by slum renewal in the inner city in the 1970s. In 1976 they purchased a Frankston nursing home as a high-care centre for Carrum Downs' residents. The Brotherhood also developed clubs such as the Coolibah Club at Carrum Downs to provide more home care services, as well as physiotherapy and chiropody.

Such innovations were more generously financed from the 1970s by government funding for aged care, increasing from 3 per cent of the Brotherhood's annual income in 1973 to over 24 per cent by 1977. Aged care accounted for 85 per cent of its expenditure in 1980 and remained 'the public face' of the Brotherhood.45 Moreover, the Brotherhood chose wisely in Tucker's successors, Geoffrey Sambell and David Scott, with Revd. Peter Hollingworth as its first chaplain, and eventually Executive Director. They adapted international ideas to local needs, addressed emerging community and family problems and committed the movement to social change. Their Family Centre Project in the 1970s aimed to reduce inequalities and distribute resources more fairly, led by progressive social workers.

### The Development of Retirement Villages in the 1960s and 1970s

Carrum Downs and Lara were seen as excellent early models of residential villages for elderly people for others to follow. The most significant early successor was the Church of England Retirement Villages of the Diocese of Sydney, led by Archdeacon Clive Goodwin. These commenced in 1960 with the purchase of 120 acres at Castle Hill, eighteen miles from Sydney, including a large homestead and six cottages, and initially described as an 'old people's home'. Its original forty-eight residents increased to 900 by 1967, with the initial aim of over 1200 in eight villages. In a 1967 interview, Archdeacon Goodwin paid a tribute to the federal government's farsighted policy in providing the £2 for £1 subsidy towards capital cost, and congratulated the churches and the Brotherhood for their vital early contribution. The 1954 Act had enabled Archdeacon Goodwin to attract large donations, including £10 000 from the Nuffield Foundation in London, which would not otherwise have been possible, and permitted the building of Nuffield Village.46

Archdeacon Goodwin observed in 1967 that old people's homes no longer carried a social stigma as they had in the 1940s, so older residents were now proud to live at Castle Hill or Carrum Downs. The Castle Hill buildings were of high quality and visitors could not distinguish which residents were aged pensioners. He emphasised that six hundred of Castle Hill's 900 residents in 1967 were aged pensioners, many with very limited means. Like Carrum Downs and Lara, however, the Church of England villages had to reject some applicants because there were many more than they could accommodate. They had spent $6 500 000 on buildings to provide accommodation for 1200 people in eight villages, and four more were planned. The gardens were almost entirely planted and cared for by residents, who had few restrictions and seemed contented.47

Their aim was for individual villages to accommodate about four hundred residents: a larger community had the advantage of more activities, such as bowling, croquet, and a library to keep people stimulated. Mowll Village had a large recreation hall, craft room, and chapel, and they were increasing their nursing home capacity to ninety-five beds. Castle Hill and Nuffield Villages were the largest, but small villages included St Johns Village at Glebe which housed ninety-four people, and St Anne's Court at Ryde for seventy-four people. Elderly residents disliked the term 'old people's homes', so they now used the title 'retirement villages', which Archdeacon Goodwin believed would become accepted, despite its American derivation.48

Nearly ten years later, in 1976, Archdeacon Goodwin gave a second interview, explaining that they were building more nursing homes in their villages, 'because a nursing home costs so much less than a hospital' and was encouraged by government policy. So far they had just two nursing homes, at Castle Hill and Dundas.49 People of all religions came to their villages for companionship, care and independence, but they had to wait from eighteen months to two years for a unit, as a donor, and over three years for a rental home unit.50 By the 1980s they had expanded to seventeen retirement villages.

Not all retirement villages were as successful and enterprising in response to federal government initiatives as the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Church of England retirement villages. Meredith Lake has recently published the story of Hammondville near Liverpool, established by Archdeacon Robert Hammond in the 1930s to offer 110 cheap homes for poor families hit hard by economic depression. Like Father Tucker, he was a religious leader with vision and he also transformed the original project to meet the more urgent needs of poverty stricken old people in the inner city slums. Hammondville Homes for Senior Citizens were comparable to Carrum Downs in the 1950s, taking full advantage of the federal government funding in the 1954 _Aged Care Homes Act_. By the late 1950s Hammondville had seventy-five employees, numerous self-care units, a nursing home and facilities including physiotherapy and hydrotherapy.51

Unfortunately in subsequent years Hammondville failed to capitalise on later federal subsidies in the enterprising manner of the Brotherhood and the Church of England Retirement Villages. Bernard Judd was an effective leader in the 1950s, though he insisted on employing only committed Christians, and failed to adapt and expand as the Brotherhood did in the 1960s and 1970s, taking full advantage of increasing federal subsidies. Meredith Lake argues that Judd's original vision became exhausted as he himself grew older: he failed to expand, appoint professional staff and employ modern fundraising methods. By the 1980s they were in serious financial difficulties, but in the 1990s a dynamic new management changed its focus to the specialised area of dementia care.52 Doubtless other aged care homes of the 1950s and 1960s suffered similar experiences in responding to changing conditions and varying needs.

In the 1970s there was some public criticism that such retirement villages were segregating older people from the mainstream community, especially when they were often located in isolated areas to obtain cheaper land. Dr A.J. Foster in 1970 opposed the 'segregation and institutionalization of elderly people', which obliged them to exist in 'a mental vacuum without challenge or inspiration', increasing the rate of mental decline. Instead Foster believed older people should be encouraged to remain in their own communities as long as possible, to prevent withdrawal and isolation. But Foster recognised that far more purpose-built housing for older people must first be available in the community. He also warned that few older people were financially able to make reasonable provision for purpose-built accommodation because most existed either on the aged pension or just above its level.53

In 1979 the NSW Council on the Ageing conducted a survey of a random sample of 2650 applicants for retirement village units. Results revealed that only 40 per cent voluntarily chose to apply, 32 per cent were personally opposed and 28 per cent were unwilling but reconciled applicants. The implication here is that many applicants were persuaded by their families or their doctors that it was their best option, in view of frailty or lack of family support. The research team concluded that older people should be assisted to stay in their familiar locality if they wished, by better provision of local accommodation and domiciliary services. But they admitted that though some metropolitan areas had built housing commission units for the elderly, there were not enough and waiting lists were too long.54 Indeed up to 1969 there was an acute shortage of public housing for poorer older people funded by state housing authorities because priority was given to younger people and larger families. Between 1965 and 1970 about 5800 units were built by state housing departments for older people—not enough—and waiting times were often up to seven years. The serious housing shortage and overstretched state resources meant that very poor old people were still being forced to take shelter in the large benevolent hospitals.55

In 1975 Dorothy Strange reported for _Woman's Day_ magazine on the 'enormously chaotic state in our care of the aged', intensified by lack of coordination at the three levels of government. Nursing homes cost far too much, and fewer accepted aged pensioners. Independent hostel-type accommodation for the frail aged was expensive and hard to find outside retirement villages. Community and home-care services were still inadequate and scattered and there were long waiting lists for housing commission units for the elderly in just a few metropolitan areas. Moreover, only a small proportion of elderly Australians were wealthy enough to remain independent throughout old age.56

Dorothy Strange argued that for many older people in the 1970s the solution to their quest for both comfort and security lay increasingly in retirement villages. She cited the example of Towradji Park Retirement Village in a small town in the Illawarra district, south of Sydney. Max Diment, a local doctor, frustrated by the chaotic state of aged care, led a local campaign to establish seven retirement complexes in the Illawarra. In consultation with the federal government he contacted numerous pensioner home owners who had applied to the council for rate rebates. He followed the Lara example in suggesting they sell their homes so they could make a $3200 'founder contribution', aided by the subsidies offered by the 1954 Act. Towradgi Park Village offered home units, a day hospital, bowls, library, dining room and other facilities, but it had a massive waiting list. Thirty per cent of aged pensioner residents paid nothing.57

By the 1970s the considerable success of donor funding generated a rapidly growing retirement village industry led by entrepreneurs arguably more interested in profits than charity. This worked against the interests of older people with limited means who were unable to pay tenant donations. Need should have been a primary basis for admission to such institutions. Instead, in many cases, the limited finances of church and charitable organisations, combined with the terms of the Commonwealth legislation, meant that foundation donor schemes took priority and prices could be high.

In 1993 Dr Sidney Sax took issue with the negative view of retirement villages so common in the 1970s, noting that attitudes had changed, because the quality of such complexes had improved, and older people wanted to exercise free choice of options. Retirement villages had advantages in addition to the foundation donor schemes. The large numbers of people in independent and hostel units generated the numbers needed to subsidise and maintain high occupancy of the far more expensive nursing homes. In the earlier years donations for entry to independent units gave privileged access to nursing home care, if required. In the _Australian Journal of Ageing_ in 1984, V. Legge reported on a survey revealing a high degree of satisfaction among retirement village residents. The villages offered benefits such as reduced anxiety, improved health, a sense of independence, varied activities, and pleasant surroundings. Some residents chose such villages because they felt vulnerable on the death of a spouse or concerned about declining health, and some preferred not to impose on their children.58 Even so, as we will see in the final chapter, individuals remained challenged by the decision for or against a retirement village as a suitable home for the elderly in the 1980s and 1990s.

### Notes

1 _Argus_ , 27 June 1945 ('Forgotten People of the City').

2 ibid., 29 May 1950.

3 Macintyre, _A Concise History of Australia_ , pp. 194–5.

4 Bolton, p. 28.

5 Dickey, pp. 167–78.

6 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 7 Oct. 1950 (John Hetherington, 'Is Old Age a Crime?').

7 Rowland, _Ageing in Australia_ , pp. 15–8.

8 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 19 Oct. 1948, 7 Oct. 1950, 22 Aug. 1959.

9 _Argus_ , 27 June, 17–18 July, 11 Oct., 27 Nov. 1945.

10 ibid., 27 June, 17–18 July, 11 Oct. 1945.

11 ibid., 16 July 1948; _Herald_ (Melbourne), 26 Feb., 5 April, 11, 16 June, 15 July, 24 Aug., 17 Sept., 10 Oct. 1949.

12 ibid., 6, 8 Nov. 1951; 12 Mar., 11 Aug., 24 Sept. 1954.

13 Hutchinson, pp. 90–2, 97–100.

14 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 15 June 1948.

15 _Argus_ , 26 June, 3 July, 6 Nov. 1951.

16 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 12 July, 31 Aug. 1948.

17 _Argus_ , 26 May, 28 Aug. 1950; 26 June, 4–5 Dec. 1951.

18 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 22 Oct. 1950; _Argus_ , 9 Nov. 1950.

19 Hutchinson, pp. 122–3; _Argus_ , 30 Aug. 1950.

20 Carter, Ruth, _ADB_.

21 Holden and Trembath, passim, and p. 112; Tucker, passim; Carter, Isabel, p. 107.

22 Hutchinson, pp. 121–2; BSL, Annual Reports, SLV, MS 13216, box 32.

23 Ronald, p. 119.

24 BSL, Annual Reports, SLV, MS 13216, box 32.

25 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 28 Feb. 1951.

26 BSL, Annual Reports, Applications for Carrum Downs, 1950–55, SLV, MS 13216, boxes 30, 32.

27 ibid.

28 ibid.

29 ibid.

30 ibid.

31 ibid.

32 ibid.

33 Kewley, pp. 315–25.

34 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 13 Feb. 1952.

35 Kewley, p. 319 ff.

36 BSL, Annual Reports, Applications for Carrum Downs, 1954–55, SLV, MS 13216, boxes 30, 32.

37 ibid.

38 ibid.

39 BSL, Annual Reports, 1954–57, ibid., box 32.

40 Holden, p. 218.

41 Carter, Isabel, pp. 160–3.

42 BSL, Lara Applications, May–June 1961, SLV MS 13216, box 30, 32.

43 ibid., 24 Jan., 27 Oct., 7 Nov. 1960, box 30.

44 BSL, _Accommodation Services for the Aged_ , ibid.; Carter, Isabel, pp. 163–4.

45 Holden, pp. 188–202, 217–8.

46 Goodwin, interview, 4 May 1967, NLA.

47 ibid.

48 ibid.

49 Goodwin, interview, 12 May 1976, NLA.

50 _SMH_ , 31 Oct 1969 (Helen Frizell).

51 Lake, passim.

52 ibid.

53 Foster, pp. 88–100.

54 Old People's Welfare Council of NSW/NSW Council on the Ageing, Annual Reports, 1979–80, ML.

55 Foster, pp. 97–8.

56 _Woman's Day_ , 15 Dec. 1975 (Dorothy Strange).

57 ibid.

58 Sax, _Ageing and Public Policy_ , pp. 23–30; Legge, pp. 3–7.

## 7

## Victorian Social Surveys on Old Age, 1954–1975

In the decade after 1945 the 'forgotten people' were at last achieving recognition in Victoria. The huge challenges facing older people began to be addressed by the press, and by compassionate individuals and organisations. The fundamental problems of housing for independent older people and reforms of the huge state hospitals for the elderly had at last received attention. The 1954 _Aged Persons Homes Act_ was a landmark as the first major intervention by the Commonwealth government to improve the lot of older people since the 1908 _Old Age Pensions Act_. But many more reforms were required. The community needed to ask why older people had been virtually forgotten for forty years, and to explore possible answers in areas such as health, prejudice, family circumstances and finance.

In the early 1950s there was a growing recognition in Victoria that a major social survey was needed to explore the causes and the potential solutions for older peoples' problems. Such social surveys had a long history in England by 1950, as Pat Thane has shown. The Booth and Rowntree surveys of poverty in England in the late-nineteenth century revealed that the condition of many old people was 'far from satisfactory', living hard and dependent lives, on minimal means. The discipline of sociology had developed earlier in Britain than Australia and was becoming more rigorous by the 1940s. But it was still strongly influenced by Talcott Parsons' erroneous argument that older people were increasingly marginalised by families and community. Instead, however, English social surveys from the late 1940s began to focus specifically on the elderly, revealing that their family networks were still remarkably strong.1

Social surveys were slow to be used in Australia, but became popular from the 1940s, as Graeme Davison has shown. In the early 1940s there were social surveys for both New South Wales and Victoria, on such topics as wartime morale, housing and poverty. The scientific 'investigator' triumphed in these years over the more sensationalist writers who aimed to prove their points rather than explore problems impartially. In 1942 A.P. Elkin, Professor of Anthropology at Sydney University, undertook a survey of civilian morale and helped to create an Australian Institute of Sociology aiming to collect data 'to promote a scientific study of society and its problems'. Davison notes that this was 'a watershed in the history of Australian sociology... it proposed a coordinated assault on the social problems of the day', including education, religion and medicine.2

During the Second World War social surveys became a vital enquiry method for the Ministry of Post-War Reconstruction. Melbourne economists now developed social surveys which were rigorous scientific endeavours, including a comprehensive survey of living conditions in wartime Melbourne. However, these early social surveys mentioned older people only incidentally, often with reference to old age pensions. From 1950 university departments often took the lead. When Dr Bertram Hutchinson of the British Social Survey Department was invited from England to carry out a survey of old people, his invitation came from the University of Melbourne's new Department of Social Work.3

### The Hutchinson Report, 1954

The Hutchinson Report in Victoria in 1954 was a significant response to the problems of older people, indicating that the public conscience of sections of the community had indeed been awakened. In October 1950 the _Herald_ newspaper announced triumphantly that press publicity about the sorry plight of elderly people had secured a vital response. The Melbourne Rotary Club shared the growing community concerns and created a citizens committee to investigate. As a result, the Rotary Club offered to sponsor a comprehensive survey of the 'The Problem of the Aged' in Victoria, led by a trained man who would help to define that problem. The _Herald_ observed that the state government should have taken responsibility for this vital report, instead of leaving it to voluntary effort. The Sidney Myer Trust generously contributed £5000 to the costs of the survey, as its first civic contribution to public policy. This was initially intended to be carried out by volunteer students from the Department of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. But undergraduates were short of time and interviews were completed by experienced full-time workers4

The sponsors of the survey brought out Dr Bertram Hutchinson in 1952 from Britain as an 'experienced social investigator'. Aged thirty-four and with a PhD from London University, he was welcomed by the press in glowing terms as an expert sociologist, humanitarian and 'champion of the aged'. Dr Hutchinson arrived in Melbourne in 1952, ready for three years' work on a report to show Australia how to 'reintegrate the aged into society'. On his second day in Melbourne he assured the _Argus_ that the main cause of the worldwide 'old age problem' was the trend for young people 'to turn their backs on their aged relatives'. Dr Hutchinson aimed to persuade older people to return to their families and to find a productive role in society.5 These were questionable assumptions made before his Australian investigation commenced. Hutchinson was one of many British experts in sociology, medicine, economics and social policy who brought ideas and expertise to Australia in the second half of the century. Many stayed in Australia and brought considerable benefits, though some proved more responsive to Australian history and conditions than Hutchinson.

The 180-page Hutchinson Report, _Old People in a Modern Australian Community_ , published in 1954, was in certain respects an extraordinary document, especially as it was the first detailed report on this subject in Australia. On the positive side of the balance sheet, its later chapters provided a mass of valuable empirical evidence about the conditions and experiences of older people in Victoria, which offered a useful starting point for reform. But this achievement was weakened by the 'Introduction' and first two chapters of the report which offered a sweeping 'theoretical view' drawn from British evidence and out-dated American sociological theory.6

Hutchinson was explicit in his _Preface_ that these 'theoretical principles' were based upon British experience, more particularly on the 1947 _Nuffield Report_ on old age in Britain. He justified this on the grounds that the British experience was allegedly equally applicable to Australian conditions: 'This [Victorian] community should be looked upon as an extension, or a development, of the British community in the Old World... Very largely the modern industrial system and the wage-earning nexus accompanied the immigrant population to Australia.'7 These were remarkable statements from a young man who apparently saw little need to test his theoretical claims against the results of his own empirical investigation in Victoria.

The British context is essential to understand Hutchinson's theoretical 'underpinnings', and British research was to become a powerful influence on Australian policy on the aged in the next two decades. Pat Thane's classic book on _Old Age in English History_ is an invaluable contextual source. She argues persuasively that 'A persistent theme in Western culture over many centuries... has been the conviction that younger people in each generation, more than "in the past", neglect their older relatives, even their parents, both emotionally and materially. This belief has survived tenaciously'. Before the mid-1950s early impressionistic social surveys in England assumed a bleak and negative view of older people and their capabilities. Surveys were focused on the lives of the elderly poor, who were objectified as 'a uniform problematic category', reinforcing a stereotype. Early English social reports were well publicised and produced 'a largely ill-informed debate', fuelled by sociological theory which assumed the poverty, frailty and marginalisation of old people.8

The American sociologist Talcott Parsons was particularly influential in promoting the view that industrialisation and modern geographical mobility caused young people to leave their parents for better lives elsewhere. Hutchinson admitted in the early theoretical chapters of his report that he was 'deeply indebted' to Parsons for his analysis of 'the implications of the modern industrial system for family and kinship organisation'.9 Sociologist Raewyn Connell illuminates Hutchinson's conceptual approach in her book _The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science_. She observed that it was tempting 'for Australian sociology to constitute itself as a branch office of metropolitan sociology' in the 1950s, importing British methods, paradigms, and topics. 'A faint missionary flavour' might be revealed, while 'Parsonian functionalism' could be imported 'in a lump', enlightening unsophisticated locals. Australian social concerns were simply assumed to be local versions of British problems.10

Only from the late 1940s did more systematic social surveys begin to reveal the true complexity and extent of 'inter-generation family reciprocities' in England. When J.H. Sheldon was researching his 1948 Wolverhampton survey, _The Social Medicine of Old Age_ , he was surprised to find that 'the family is of fundamental importance' to old people; many were in regular contact with their children or had relatives living nearby. Older people in the mid-twentieth century, as in earlier centuries, clung to their independence for as long as possible, and often contributed more to their younger families than they received in return. Peter Willmott and Michael Young in the mid-1950s were equally surprised to find in Bethnal Green 'the extended family alive and well in inner London'. Pat Thane found no evidence of the alleged family decline or callous neglect of the elderly by their children, even by the end of the twentieth century: 'the fact of close contact between the generations has changed little over time.'11 Peter Laslett, a leading demographer, has reinforced Pat Thane's conclusions: 'It has been demonstrated that in pre-industrial England the family group was not of a multi-generational character.' The elderly had not been rejected from the family circle because of twentieth century social and economic change: 'they were never there in anything like the numbers we may suppose.'12

Dr Hutchinson might have looked well beyond Parsons' American sociological theory to conclusions based on the mass of empirical Australian evidence collected in Victoria. Instead Hutchinson argued forcefully that old people in earlier societies (including Australia) had been integrated into supportive three-generation families which treated older parents with dignity and respect. But industrialisation and modernisation allegedly created a two-generational nuclear family in which the generations tended to lead separate lives. His report insisted that older people had become a deprived section of the community, dissatisfied with their status, and neglected by their families. They were seen to have different needs which excluded them from the socio-economic life of the main community, including their own younger families. Retirement from work was expected and carried a loss of status, independence and financial means. Younger generations denied the elderly a significant role in the family and workforce, justified by their assumed physical and intellectual inferiority. Hutchinson claimed that this was an internalised and socially conditioned inferiority for the aged, in the interests of the dominant younger group.13

It would be challenging for any empirical study, however detailed and thorough, to overcome the onslaught of such powerful 'theoretical' assumptions. Not surprisingly, there was considerable conflict and inconsistency between the early theoretical chapters of Hutchinson's Report and the mass of detailed empirical evidence in subsequent chapters drawn from the extensive field investigation. Sixteen hundred names were extracted from Victorian electoral rolls at random across the state, leading to 1322 open-ended interviews. An additional smaller-scale investigation was conducted in Melbourne in the districts of Fitzroy, Carlton, Collingwood and South Melbourne, while forty-five homes and institutions for the aged across Victoria were also visited. Hutchinson noted that 60 per cent of the entire Victorian population lived in Melbourne, 10 per cent in provincial towns, and 30 per cent in rural areas. There was a particularly high concentration of older people in the Ballarat-Bendigo goldfields. However, the value of this mass of empirical evidence was weakened by the decision to commence sampling at the age of fifty-five rather than sixty or sixty-five which were usually applied in Australia, as the ages when pensions became available for women and men respectively. It would also have been helpful to distinguish between pensioners and those without pensions.14

The empirical evidence was invaluable but often quite inconsistent with the theoretical assumptions in the early chapters of the report. Interviewees were widely agreed that it was preferable for older people to be independent and economically self-supporting but this was not always possible. While it was seen as an undesirable last resort for old people to live with their adult children, a considerable minority of frail older people did in fact live with their children. Moreover, as in England, adult children and grandchildren often lived close by and were willing to cook meals, assist financially, and take in their aged parents if necessary. There was a widespread belief that younger relatives had a responsibility to care for frail parents. These empirical results are entirely consistent with Pat Thane's findings and the later British surveys, but in direct conflict with Talcott Parsons and Hutchinson's theoretical framework, though Hutchinson never directly acknowledged this.15 Dr Alan Stoller, chief clinical officer of Victoria's Mental Hygiene Authority, strongly rejected Hutchinson's charge about adult children's lack of responsibility towards their parents. At a conference on 'Problems of Old Age in the Australian Community' held in Melbourne in 1958 Stoller commented on the Hutchinson Report:

No account is taken of the fact that an estimated 25 per cent of the elderly with problems are single or have never had children and so have no relatives who can care for them; nor is it stressed that a sizeable proportion of the remainder are in fact being kept at home through the ministration of relatives, often at great personal cost.16

But, despite its faults, the Hutchinson Report offered valuable evidence on the demographic and economic foundations of 'the ageing problem', which had a numerically urban base, with 60 per cent of older people in Victoria living in Melbourne itself. Prahran, Brighton and St Kilda contained a large proportion of Melbourne's boarding houses, nursing homes and old people's homes. They accommodated significant numbers of older people living alone, widowed and unmarried. There was also a considerable concentration of older people in the urban gold-mining districts of Bendigo and Ballarat, which contained two large benevolent institutions for the aged. Hutchinson's Report emphasised that extreme poverty and distress among the elderly was focused in slum areas, and not as widespread as alarmist press reports tended to imply. However, Hutchinson argued that the core 'problem' of old age in Victoria lay in the poorest areas of Carlton and Fitzroy, which contained a high proportion of very poor people, many living alone in slum conditions.17

A detailed appendix on the living conditions of aged pensioners in Fitzroy and Carlton provided a useful supplement to the main chapters of the Hutchinson Report. The average income of pensioners in Fitzroy and Carlton was £3.7.6 per week, though a minority received extra funding from casual employment. Rents in these two suburbs ranged between ten and twenty-five shillings a week for furnished rooms, but costs of lighting, gas, food and heating inflated total costs substantially. A large proportion of tenants lived in squalid slum conditions, with limited heating facilities, damp walls and little daylight. Sometimes three men were obliged to share one small room, but each still paid £1 in rent. Many such houses were overcrowded, with little privacy and poor hygienic facilities. It was challenging or impossible to afford new clothing and shoes, bus fares, newspapers, nourishing food and adequate fuel. Sometimes relatives helped out with food and all pensioners received free medical treatment and some medicines.18

The second part of Hutchinson's appendix on the pensioners of Fitzroy and Carlton explored their attitudes towards their status as pensioners. Most considered themselves fortunate to have the pension and free medical care, though almost all thought the pension very inadequate. Some 'just managed' with a severe struggle to obtain the basic essentials of food, fuel and clothing. Most condemned the standard of accommodation and stressed the urgent need for provision of cheap and adequate flats or little cottages. They emphasised loneliness as a major problem for the frail aged and those living alone, and the need for community centres like that already established at South Melbourne, which provided cheap nourishing food—a 'blessing from heaven'—vital to survival. Some felt a stigma was attached to receipt of the pension, especially because the means test was 'degrading', penalising industrious old people. Several thought pensions should go to all citizens as a right, but it remained a charity, which for them was humiliating. Some blamed 'the government', particularly for the extreme problems of the eldest and most infirm. Overall the attitudes of the interviewees varied greatly, with many feeling powerless and others aiming to vote Labor in the hope of increasing their pensions.19

Hutchinson's empirical chapters also revealed that the ageing problem had a distinctive gendered perspective, which produced a disproportionate number of female 'problem' cases. Women increasingly outnumbered men in the older age groups because they lived longer and often survived their husbands, yet fewer women than men found refuge in their children's households. By their late eighties only about 7 per cent of women still had living husbands, and many others were single or divorced. Far more women than men were in poverty, desperately lonely, and needing institutional care, especially as it was more common for women to live alone. The largest proportions of isolated women living alone were in the poorest areas of Carlton, Fitzroy and central Melbourne. Older women also existed on considerably smaller incomes than men of the same age, with far less access to employment and superannuation and with lower wages.20

The Hutchinson Report argued that the elderly were not seen as an integral part of the mainstream economic culture. Few gained paid employment after retirement and they were not encouraged to do so. The income of older people declined with age, dropping from a mean weekly income of £12/10 at fifty-nine to just £5 over seventy-five. Only 12 per cent of those over sixty-five were employed, mostly men, and they usually worked out of economic necessity rather than preference, since a job made a marked difference to an inadequate pension. In the poorest areas such as Fitzroy, Carlton and Collingwood, 50 per cent of the elderly desperately needed to work. The Hutchinson Report regarded the early retirement system as wasteful, costly and demoralising, when many were willing to work for longer.21

However, it is necessary to question and qualify Hutchinson's conclusions here. Professor Richard Downing drew on the 1954 Census to show that across Australia 50 per cent of males between the ages of sixty-five and sixty-nine were employed, dropping substantially to only 22 per cent over seventy, while the proportion of working women over sixty-five was relatively small. But Hutchinson's statistics are not directly comparable with Downing's as Hutchinson included women and commenced his analysis at the earlier age of fifty-five. The demographer H.M. Pollard agreed that many men remained in the workforce over the age of sixty-five, while few women did; and that the percentage of working men declined rapidly with age, from about 50 per cent at age sixty-five to 30 per cent four years later.22

Hutchinson argued that old age, retirement and poverty were inextricably linked. Unless they worked, older people experienced a significant decline in income after retirement, which dropped further with increased age. Elderly women suffered most, as did people living alone, especially those who did not own their own homes. The full pension rate was very low at £3/7/6 per week in 1953, only 25 per cent of the basic Victorian wage. One-third of pensioners deemed the rate 'totally inadequate', and worse for those living alone in cold, inadequate rooms in slum areas. All regarded the pension rate as unsatisfactory. Many also wanted the means test abolished or improved since it was seen as harsh and unjust by those who had worked hard all their lives.23 This important debate on retirement, initiated by Hutchinson, was not developed in any detail until the 1960s, and will be examined in a later chapter.

The Hutchinson Report placed great emphasis on the need for community amenities for the elderly to compensate for their losses in social life, including their enforced retirement from work. Acute loneliness was seen as endemic among the elderly, and was especially tough for women and the very old, as it increased with age, and usually accompanied poverty. The report recommended clubs as vital for old people when they had no accepted place in the ordinary life of the community. In 1954 there were fewer than six such clubs in Melbourne and none elsewhere in Victoria. They were seen as especially valuable when they also offered a cheap restaurant to give one good meal a day to the elderly, as did the South Melbourne Elderly Citizens Club. One-third of the survey's respondents were club members, but most had attended only once and many others only once a week, usually due to lack of facilities such as club rooms. Even so, half the respondents chose not to join such clubs, though most enjoyed reading and listening to the radio. The report concluded that most older people saw old age as a time of rest and retirement—a remarkable contrast with the interests of most older people today.24 Hutchinson failed to mention the valuable Old People's Welfare Council, established in Victoria in 1951 to fulfil precisely these social roles—the subject of the next chapter.

Hutchinson concluded that poor health was a characteristic of most aged people, who were assumed to be frail. Their liability to illness was part of 'the problem of old age', and a source of continual anxiety for those living alone. It also explained the difficulty for many frail elders in obtaining accommodation in boarding houses and homes for the elderly. About 14 000 poor older people in Victoria were housebound because they were incapacitated by chronic disorders. Most aged people possessed spectacles, but many might not have been appropriate, and few used hearing aids. Four per cent of people over fifty could not afford to buy sufficient sustaining food, while 11 per cent of pensioners suffered from totally inadequate food, clothing and warmth.25 Such statistics seem low because those over fifty-five were included.

The two most significant deficiencies in relation to health were the lack of regular medical attention for the elderly, and the severe shortage of general hospital beds for old people with chronic illnesses. Even those over seventy-five only called in a doctor in an emergency, and less than one-quarter overall saw a doctor regularly. Hutchinson concluded that the most urgent need was to increase appropriate general hospital accommodation for chronic cases. There were only fifty beds in Victoria for old people needing skilled nursing. The trend for hospitals for the chronic sick to be turned into acute hospitals hit the elderly hardest, as they formed the majority of the chronic sick.26

In conclusion Hutchinson recommended that the means test for pensions should be dropped, the pension rates substantially increased and a universal contributory pension on British lines considered. The fit and willing should be encouraged to work on retirement to ease the pension burden, more old people's clubs should be established, and many more hospital beds made available for the chronically ill. Building small homes for the elderly was also essential, instead of huge institutions.27 It should be noted that some of these proposals were already in train by 1954, though Hutchinson did not mention this. The 1954 Commonwealth government _Aged Persons Homes Act_ had already been announced, as we have seen, and the Old People's Welfare Council had been busy since its creation in 1951. Moreover, Colonel Elliott had been making the point in the press for years about the urgent need for chronic beds in general hospitals. Hutchinson also failed to acknowledge that a contributory pension scheme on British lines was not politically acceptable in Australia: it had twice been debated and rejected, as we saw earlier.

It was scarcely surprising that the shocked media responses to the Hutchinson Report focused on the early theoretical chapters. It seems likely that many journalists read no further, thus neglecting the more valuable later chapters based on the years of empirical investigation. For example, the _Herald_ 's response in late 1954 was markedly different from its enthusiastic welcome to Hutchinson three years earlier. The _Herald_ devoted three substantial leader articles to the report on publication in November 1954, expressing dismay at the statement that 'old people are unrespected and unwanted, by relatives, industry and the community'. Equally disturbing were Hutchinson's conclusions that the elderly no longer lived with their children, causing unhappiness and loneliness; and that industry had no use for old people, whose relatives also viewed them as a burden. The press responded that if these alarming allegations were correct, then young and old must radically change their attitudes to each other. Some journalists wondered if poor education was to blame, or a drift away from Christianity.28 Following this initial angry response, the press was silent on the Hutchinson Report, disregarding its valuable empirical analysis of the major social and economic problems experienced by elderly Australians. Hutchinson's unjustified claim that the family had abandoned its care for elderly relatives cast a large shadow over the debate about 'the ageing problem' in Australia for the next ten years. Moreover, though the report was published as a book, little effort seems to have been made to promote and distribute it, perhaps due to the adverse press response.

Nicholas Brown argues that Professor Richard Downing's 1957 pamphlet on 'Raising age pensions' was more influential than Hutchinson's Report published three years earlier. This was probably true given the failure to disseminate Hutchinson's findings. Downing's pamphlet was certainly more widely known, and it consolidated a powerful empirical tradition in Australian social policy. A strong case was made for increased and more competent government responsibility for the elderly, taking detailed account of weekly budgets for both singles and married couples, housing conditions and benefits already received. Brown notes a receptive audience 'wary of "indiscriminate handouts" but equally sensitive to the incongruities of poverty amid relative affluence'. He concludes that the pamphlet was influential in directing aged pension policy towards supplementary assistance in particular circumstances. Moreover, throughout the 1960s, differential payment rates were introduced taking into account various individual situations. However, this shift from a focus on the monetary level of the pension to the individual needs of a pensioner was not easy.29

### Living on the Pension in Inner-City Richmond from 1945 to 1965

A valuable corrective to some assumptions in the Hutchinson Report's early theoretical chapters is offered by two excellent sources on inner-city Richmond life. Janet McCalman's superb account of a working-class generation born during the 1890s depression traced their experiences of war, unemployment and subsequent economic revival. In _Struggletown_ she told the story of the changes in Richmond itself, with community decline commencing in the interwar years, when people learned to cope stoically with deprivation. A University of Melbourne Social Survey in 1941 noted, 'As always, survival on a low income depended on tough self discipline, and the senile, the simple and the incapacitated were doomed to deprivation'. Eight per cent of the 1941 survey sample were in dire poverty, including all of the sampled pensioners and retired people on small incomes, coping only because years of poverty had taught them the skills and stamina essential for survival.30

McCalman observed that after 1945 young people with means fled from demoralised inner-city life to a better existence for young families in the new outer suburbs. 'The decaying industrial suburbs became the refuge of the old and the failed.' The elderly, the sick and the frail stayed behind as Richmond descended into 'social and physical decay', a working class ghetto with high death rates, especially for men. In 1964 the Victorian Housing Commission started building 22-storey high-rise blocks of flats, following the recommendations of architects enthusiastic about British and Scandinavian projects for the elderly. They were considered by many residents to be worse than the slums they replaced. However, there was a positive side to Richmond's balance sheet in the twenty years after the war, with the arrival of many new Australians with their young families from Europe and elsewhere, especially Greece and Italy. Moreover home ownership in Richmond increased from 32 per cent in 1900 to an impressive 85 per cent in 1965. The changes left an older Australian community dominated by women, many of them widowed, many by now owning their own houses, but with little savings.31

Another very different social survey provides a valuable spotlight directed at the old age pensioners of Richmond in 1965—women over sixty and men over sixty-five—in contrast to Hutchinson's 1954 survey of all older people over fifty-five. Micheline Dewdney and J.S. Collings supervised a report published by the Victorian Hospitals and Charities Commission, _Living on the Old Age Pension: A Study of Problems, Attitudes and Prospects in Richmond, Victoria_.32 This study was subsidised first by the Lions Club of Richmond and later by the Hospitals and Charities Commission. It was very different from the Hutchinson Report of 1954, as it was focused only on pensioners, who were among the poorest inhabitants of a poor working class suburb. This study examined just one particular inner-city community in depth, whereas Hutchinson surveyed a sample of all people over fifty-five in the entire state.

Dewdney and Collings aimed 'to establish the attitudes of the old people to their own problems' and their views on how best to overcome them. They had both worked for years with old people in Richmond, who mainly 'lived in reasonable comfort and contentment', contrary to popular assumptions and despite low incomes. They resisted the transfer to institutional life that was often the response of government policy, supported by middle-class attitudes. It was often wrongly assumed, following Hutchinson, that family bonds and friendship structures had broken down, leaving too many old people as depressed isolates.33

A very detailed questionnaire was compiled to establish the views of older people on their own problems and their possible solutions. Their sample was drawn in part from 129 patients at the Clark-Hiskens Medical Centre in Richmond, and also from 181 old people scattered throughout the city of Richmond, contacted mainly by knocking at doors. They included 227 women over sixty and 83 men over sixty-five, out of 4367 people of pensionable age in Richmond. Interviews were carried out by fifteen senior students from the Department of Social Studies at the University of Melbourne, under the careful direction of the two authors. The fifteen students conducted a total of 310 interviews, following training at the Medical Centre. Most interviewees were under eighty, nearly 30 per cent were married and 51 per cent widowed: 93 per cent claimed to be Christians of various denominations, though 70 per cent did not attend church. Most remarkable was that only 5.5 per cent had no surviving family: 58 per cent had children and 27 per cent siblings.34

The old age pension was the only source of income for 77 per cent of interviewees. A tiny number (2.9 per cent) had extra funds from part-time employment and 5 per cent received rent from lodgers. Eighty per cent condemned the pension as providing an utterly inadequate subsistence existence, given the high cost of living. To make ends meet they were obliged to reduce spending on clothing, food and fuel. The means test was considered too severe by sixty per cent, with most wanting it abolished. Twenty-four per cent of people interviewed had no health problems, though 47 per cent had two or more problems combined, common in older age. Rheumatism and arthritis were cited by 26 per cent as their main problem, 20 per cent noted heart problems, 14 per cent chest and 12 per cent high blood pressure. Health issues affected family finances: 11 per cent of respondents claimed work was impossible due to ill-health and 13 per cent regretted that health costs had consumed their savings. Sixty per cent did not access external assistance with their health problems, relying instead on family and friends.35

Dewdney and Collings' conclusion was quite different from that of the early theoretical chapters of the Hutchinson Report a decade earlier: 'family bonds and assistance to the aged are possibly far stronger in this modern age than we are sometimes led to believe.' Friends were also a vital source of mutual assistance, both in the house and the immediate neighbourhood, with visits to and from friends and family dominating social lives. A substantial 73 per cent actively kept in touch with friends and/or families, mostly weekly, while 'isolates' were at a surprisingly small number of 7.7 per cent, neither visiting nor receiving visits. The authors concluded the vast majority of old people in Richmond were neither lonely nor isolated. Very few relied on outside services: only one woman used meals on wheels, five had a home help visit, and four used the Melbourne District Nursing Service. However, extended home care programmes, if and when available, would be widely supported.36

On housing, it was remarkable that over forty per cent of pensioners in Richmond now owned their home, while a further 10.3 per cent lived rent free in a family-owned house. Moreover 48 per cent had not moved house in twenty years, while 46 per cent had lived in Richmond for more than thirty years. Indeed 84 per cent of interviewees preferred to remain in Richmond, rather than follow the younger generation into the suburbs. Housing conditions were considered satisfactory by 85 per cent. A high 60 per cent were living with their spouse or family, and a further 12 per cent with close friends. Contrary to alarmist press reports, only 18 per cent of the sample lived alone, comprising forty-eight women and eight men. Housing conditions were considered satisfactory by 85 per cent of interviewees, far higher than might be expected in an old inner-city suburb. Ninety per cent of interviewees would never consider entering an institution for the elderly, such as Cheltenham or Mount Royal, because they feared loss of independence and hated charity. Some said they would rather die than enter such an institution, and their family would never allow it.37

A high 94 per cent were not employed: those few who were still working did so chiefly because of financial pressure, usually taking part-time work in light industry, cleaning or domestic work. The majority (78 per cent) had previously been employed in unskilled work and 14 per cent in semi-skilled. Ill-health had caused 20 per cent to leave their jobs, 30 per cent had chosen to do so, 15 per cent were compulsorily retired, and 31 per cent were engaged in home duties. Sixty-three per cent preferred not to work now, compared with 18 per cent who might work if they were not so anxious about the means test and loss of pension.38

On spare-time activities Dewdney and Collings concluded: 'Few appeared to occupy their time with active, constructive activity'; most were solitary rather than social pursuits, but 90 per cent of interviewees were satisfied with this situation. Activities included reading (13 per cent), housework (9 per cent), knitting, walking, sewing and resting (each 6 per cent), and church, gardening and radio (4 per cent). Most engaged in two or more such pursuits, and only 10 per cent mentioned boredom. Indeed, 74 per cent claimed to be totally contented, while 37 per cent considered no facilities were needed to improve their social lives.39

Another remarkable finding was that only 13 per cent of Richmond interviewees belonged to elderly citizens' clubs, church clubs or the Richmond Pensioners' Union. Even fewer were active participants, probably reflecting low membership and participation by pensioners throughout the community. Dewdney and Collings concluded:

Clubs in general are formed by social groups for their own pleasure and interest. Clubs of the Elderly are formed not by the old people themselves but by others of goodwill who believe they need them and design such clubs in their image of a need. There would appear to be something wrong with this concept and design. The existence of such Clubs is widely known, membership is small and utilization even smaller.

Indeed 82 per cent of pensioners in Richmond responded that they were not interested in joining a club. The thirteen people who currently used the Richmond elderly citizens' club considered it badly run, with unsatisfactory meals. 33 per cent could not read well or were not interested in reading, possibly including some new Australians. However, 34 per cent read daily newspapers and 31 per cent read romance novels or westerns.40

Of those interviewed, 43 per cent considered they had no problems, while 12 per cent nominated ill-health as a significant difficulty, 11 per cent income inadequacy and 7 per cent housing. Only 2.4 per cent mentioned loneliness or depression as a problem. Dewdney and Collings concluded that the Richmond story of its old people was very different from popular assumptions. Old people in Richmond were generally contented with their housing, financial means and health. Family structures had not broken down to the degree often assumed and their problems and needs were clear and simple. They wanted their pension tied to the basic wage, rather than used as a political strategy. Their roots in Richmond were deep and they believed 'transplantation spells disaster'.41

The middle classes tended to assume that 'retirement spells boredom and human breakdown', but this was not necessarily true for the less skilled. Richmond pensioners did not resent compulsory retirement nor did they seek work or casual employment. But they did reject middle-class efforts to correct their apparent boredom with clubs, and to supply their assumed needs, such as meals on wheels. They concluded that middle-class reformers should accept pensioners' own assessment of their needs and direct efforts accordingly. Recommendations should be practical and reflect pensioners' own suggestions; the pension rate should be half the basic wage, following wage variations, and health insurance should be provided with the pension. Home-care assistance in case of sickness was the main welfare service which was needed and would be welcomed. Relatively small capital expenditure would be valuable for home renovation and maintenance. Physical rehabilitation, such as physiotherapy, chiropody and dental services would also be welcome.42

### Social Surveys in Brisbane in 1968 and the Henderson Reports of 1970–1975

It is worth noting that a far more limited study in 1968 of 253 people over sixty in suburban Brisbane reached similar conclusions. Most of the sample population received the old age pension and all lived in their own homes, none in institutions. Of the 253 interviewees, 108 were men and 145 women, with 48 per cent of women widowed compared to 18 per cent of men. Most people interviewed enjoyed a 'reasonable' standard of living, though 37 per cent considered their income inadequate and there were some cases of poverty. The means test impacted harshly on those dependent on very limited superannuation or private income. A minority were poorly housed, chronically ill and lonely. Yet kinship ties remained remarkably strong, contrary to Hutchinson's Report of a decade earlier:

The amount and variety of help provided for so many of the old people once more offers striking evidence of the scope and strength of family support sustaining so many old people who are living in the suburbs... The support given by children, materially, emotionally, and in providing services, was evident in all facets of life studied. In many instances there was a two-way process with support and help being provided by the parent... The degree of contact with children was high.

The role of grandparents in the extended family was significant: they acted as babysitters, caring for grandchildren in their own homes when daughters were sick, or pregnant. Neighbours also fulfilled a vital role, especially for old people living alone. The study placed great emphasis on the need for extended domiciliary help from local community and welfare groups to keep older people in their homes and out of institutions.43

Perceptions of degrees of poverty vary according to class, age and gender, as well as the state of the economy, the nature of the survey samples, and the eye of the beholder. Where the Richmond and Brisbane surveys of 1965 and 1968 were relatively sanguine, the extensive and influential Henderson _People in Poverty_ survey of Melbourne published in 1970 was more pessimistic. Professor Ronald Henderson migrated from Britain to Melbourne to direct this survey of poverty in Melbourne for the Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. He was one of many British migrants to carry British expertise to Australia in these years. Graeme Davison describes Henderson as 'a latter-day reincarnation of the spirit of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree', inspired by Christian benevolence. His aim was to measure the causes and extent of poverty in terms of adequacy of income, borrowing the concept of 'a poverty line' or minimum income of economic sufficiency from Seebohm Rowntree's English study. The initial survey concluded that most poverty was found among social service beneficiaries, including old age pensioners: indeed 15 per cent of the elderly still lived in poverty and a further 11 per cent in marginal poverty. However, significant improvements were considered likely from relatively moderate increases in aged pension rates.44

The _People in Poverty_ survey in 1970 stimulated a significant Commission of Inquiry into poverty in Australia as a whole, chaired by Henderson. This rigorous economic analysis concluded in 1975 that 24 per cent of elderly people outside institutions were very poor and a further 22 per cent were relatively poor. Instead of the decrease in poverty predicted in the 1970 _People in Poverty_ survey and ensuing report, the poverty of old people had markedly increased, in part because of their concentration in the inner suburbs of large cities. The bleak conclusions of Henderson reflected the harsh impact of years of economic decline from 1970.45 Indeed, the largest single identifiable group of people in poverty in Australia were those over sixty-five, and also single women over sixty. Increases in the aged pension had not alleviated their poverty. Not all elderly people were poor, but the most disadvantaged were the frail aged who required increased benefits and support. More appropriate accommodation was required, as well as adequate assistance for relatives caring for old people at home and increased home care services. Geriatric medical services must be improved, more subsidised housing for older people built and administration of services for the elderly reformed.46 These recommendations were appropriate, far-sighted and well overdue, but implementation was unfortunately delayed for another decade, as we shall see.

### Notes

1 Thane, _Old Age in English History_ , pp. 407–9.

2 Davison, 'The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology', pp. 139–62.

3 ibid.

4 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 9–10 Oct. 1950; Hutchinson, pp. v–vi, 1–12.

5 _Argus_ , 11 Jan. 1952.

6 Hutchinson, pp. 13–20 ('A Theoretical View of the Position of the Aged').

7 ibid., pp. xi, 19.

8 Thane, _Old Age in English History_ , pp. 407–35.

9 ibid. p. 407; Hutchinson, p. 16.

10 Connell, ch. 4.

11 Thane _, Old Age in English History_ , pp. 408–12.

12 Laslett, p. 35.

13 Hutchinson, pp. 3–7, 21–4, 33–43.

14 ibid., pp. 8–12.

15 ibid., pp. 21–43.

16 Stoller, p. 194.

17 Hutchinson, pp. 44–53, 56.

18 ibid., pp. 154–5.

19 ibid., pp. 165–70.

20 ibid., pp. 53–59.

21 ibid., pp. 64–8, 143–5.

22 Downing, p. 171; Pollard, p. 44.

23 Hutchinson, pp. 68–74.

24 ibid., pp. 76–89.

25 ibid., pp. 101–13.

26 ibid., pp. 110–3.

27 ibid., pp. 139–53. See also _Herald_ (Melbourne), 26 Nov. 1954.

28 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 26, 27, 29 Nov., 1 Dec. 1954.

29 Brown, Nicholas, 'They Are Still People', pp. 78–9.

30 McCalman, pp. 249, 251–3, 292.

31 ibid., p. 251 ff; ch.10.

32 Dewdney and Collings, passim

33 ibid., Introduction.

34 ibid.

35 ibid., pp. 13–9.

36 ibid., pp. 13–27, 84–5.

37 ibid., pp. 35–42, 45–6.

38 ibid., pp. 55–76.

39 ibid., pp. 77–81.

40 ibid., pp. 86–9, 91–3.

41 ibid., pp. 95–101.

42 ibid.

43 Smith, Hartshorn and Graham, pp. 55–7, 100–4.

44 Henderson, Harcourt and Harper, _People in Poverty_ , ch. 14.

45 Henderson, _Poverty in Australia_ , passim; Kewley, pp. 391–3.

46 Henderson, _Poverty in Australia_ , pp. 248–54.

## 8

## 'The Lobby Of Conscience' in NSW: Old People's Welfare Councils and Home Care

Emerging post-war attitudes included a new concern about the rights of older individuals to lives of dignity and value, which affected both New South Wales and Victoria, despite differences in timing. This chapter will explore the 'lobby of conscience' in NSW and its institutionalisation in the Old People's Welfare Councils—subsequently renamed Councils for the Ageing. It will also highlight the growing leadership role of the new profession of social workers, both in social welfare for older people and in geriatric medicine, as the next chapter will show. NSW was at least five years behind Victoria in developing organisations to take serious action to improve conditions for old people. Some of the early impetus for social reform in Victoria came from an outstanding press campaign in the later 1940s by the _Argus_ and the Melbourne _Herald_ , which was not replicated in the NSW press. Indeed there were inferences that the people of NSW were less compassionate than those in Victoria, where the Old Peoples Welfare Council was created in 1951, six years earlier than in NSW.

### Social Welfare Models for Older People in NSW: Britain and Victoria

In 1951 Kate Ogilvie, then senior almoner at the Sydney Hospital, wrote an article for the _Social Service_ journal on the innovations in social services for the elderly in Britain since 1945. Ogilvie was one of many early specialists in social work and geriatric medicine from Australia who visited England for extended periods to study aged-care reform in the early decades of the British welfare state. Several British pioneers in geriatric medicine were invited to lecture and advise on the possible implementation of similar reforms in Australia: these included Marjorie Warren from Middlesex, Lionel Cosin from Oxford and Fergus Anderson from Glasgow. Ogilvie noted that the British model of the welfare state and the Nuffield Foundation surveys on the elderly had considerable influence in Australia.1

The impetus for social reform in Britain came in part from discoveries of the shocking conditions for many old people in their own homes and in institutions during and after the Second World War. The National Old People's Welfare Committee was established in Britain in 1944 to coordinate all organisations concerned with old people, to protect their interests, press for government action and grants, and encourage community efforts. Its most important initiative was to establish three hundred local old people's welfare committees, to study local needs and establish services, including old people's clubs and home-care services. These welfare committees also sponsored meals on wheels for frail old people in their homes, funded by the central government through local authorities. Moreover, the welfare committees recognised that many old people were lonely and needed recreation and company. Hundreds of elderly citizens clubs were sponsored and funded throughout England to provide companionship, conversation, social activities and handicrafts. Government grants supported these initiatives designed to keep old people out of institutions and enable them to stay in their own homes.2

In January 1952 Mary Mathias, another pioneer social worker within the Red Cross Society, echoed Kate Ogilvie's call for action in Sydney. She agreed about the unsuitability of large-scale institutional care for the elderly, stressing that 95 per cent of old people in the community lived alone or with family. They often had to cope with impaired health, loneliness and increased living costs. The aim must be to provide conditions and services to allow them to live independently and avoid institutional care. She was convinced that old people's clubs were successful in combating loneliness in Britain, acting also as centres for welfare services, information, social contacts, and cheap nourishing meals. However, Mary Mathias concluded sadly that such services in NSW were 'distressingly limited' in 1952.3 Despite the best efforts of energetic pioneers such as Kate Ogilvie and Mary Mathias, NSW did not establish a National Old People's Welfare Council until 1957.

Instead, the pioneer state for Old People's Welfare Councils in Australia was Victoria, which officially adopted the British model in 1951 and was described by the press as more compassionate than NSW. In 1949 a meeting of the social workers, councillors and citizens of South Melbourne discussed the problems of old people, which they considered to be increasing. Consequently they persuaded the Council of South Melbourne to establish the South Melbourne Elderly Citizens Club, with a canteen for meals and a clubroom for recreation. This was a progressive move in 1949. Led by Mrs Mary Kehoe, this club persuaded the Council to purchase two army military huts which were painted green, with attractive curtains, tables for indoor games and a pleasant garden. Its new canteen provided cheap midday meals, served by enthusiastic female volunteers. The first Australian 'meals on wheels' were operated by tricycle from the South Melbourne Elderly Citizens Club canteen, serving up to sixty old people a day, until the Red Cross subsequently took over the transport.4

The initiative for the creation of the Old People's Welfare Council (OPWC) of Victoria based on the English model came from the National Council of Women of Victoria in 1950. The Old People's Welfare Council was officially launched at the Melbourne Town Hall in April 1951 by the Lord Mayor and met with an enthusiastic response from the press.5 The first two annual reports of the OPWC of Victoria, in 1952 and 1953, revealed its commitment, enthusiasm and early reliance on British ideas. Guest speakers in the first year included John Moss, chairman of its British counterpart, to explain the British model, while three executive council members were sent to Britain to undertake practical research into the British model of municipal operation. The Victorian OPWC circularised suburban municipal councils, asking them to call public meetings to establish recreational clubs for the elderly and submit plans for meals on wheels, home helps, home visiting and nursing. By 1953 recreational clubs were established in South Melbourne, Carlton, Kew, Caulfield, Chelsea and Oakleigh. This was a remarkable start, demonstrating energy, ideas and organisational skills, and recognising that volunteer community enterprise was vital, given the severe limitations in 1952 on government funding for the elderly.6

By 1956 the Committee of the Victorian OPWC focused on those aspects of community service for the elderly which were more appropriate for voluntary effort than state action. They also considered the most effective ways to stimulate public opinion and support for the claims of the elderly in the community. Sub-committees were created to examine the findings of the 1954 Hutchinson Report, as an informed basis for further study. In this respect, at least, that Report proved its worth. The Victorian OPWC expressed appreciation for fairly generous subsidies from the Victorian government for capital expenditure on provision of clubs and other amenities. As usual, news of recent British initiatives was high on the agenda, with Dr J.H. Sheldon of the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton, hailed as an inspiring guest speaker at a Victorian conference on the needs of the elderly in 1956.7

The Melbourne _Herald_ gave strong support to the OPWC of Victoria throughout the 1950s, depicting it as the 'modern fairy godmother' for the old people of Victoria, leading the way in promoting outstanding community work. In 1953 and 1954 the _Herald_ appealed for volunteers to help with meals on wheels organised from the Richmond Town Hall, subsidised by the mayor of Richmond. Butchers volunteered to supply free ingredients for the soup, several chefs offered to cook meals and over fifty people cleaned up. The Victorian government provided generous subsidies for capital expenditure on municipal clubs and emergency housekeeping services. This state government largesse in Victoria stood in stark contrast to the subsequent lack of generosity by its NSW counterpart.8

In 1956 the _Herald_ newspaper gave £5000 to the OPWC to contribute to its efforts to inspire and assist the elderly. Moreover, the National Council of the OPWC was established in Melbourne in November 1958, with Dr Marjory Warren, the distinguished founder of geriatric medicine in England, as the first guest speaker. Its purpose was to encourage the growth of state councils of the OPWC across Australia, coordinate their efforts and lobby the federal government for support, with the intention of playing a more influential national role.9

In 1958 a seminar on 'The Problems of Old Age in the Australian Community' was held in Melbourne. Miss F. Donovan, another member of this first generation of social workers, offered a rather cautious report on the substantial achievements of the OPWC. She warned that 'community mindedness' and club attendance had not been strong features of Australian urban life, so they should not have unrealistic expectations. Nevertheless, there were now twenty-five effective elderly citizens clubs in the metropolitan area, and more would follow. Meals on wheels and home helps were particularly valuable, as was home nursing, with 5000 elderly people now attended by the Melbourne District Nursing Service. She applauded the efforts to promote home care over institutional care, keeping the elderly in their homes within their community.10

### Champions for the Elderly in Sydney 1943–52

In NSW, far more was left to the individual enterprise of a limited number of compassionate people, including social workers and clergymen. A major initiative in Sydney in 1944–45 came from medical social worker Katharine (Kate) Ogilvie, who became a dynamic leader of the campaign to improve the lives and conditions of older people during the next fifteen years. Her interest in old people arose from her active involvement for many years with the NSW Council of Social Service, not least as President in 1952–59, when she played a leading role in creating the Old People's Welfare Council in 1957. Known affectionately as 'Battleship Kate', Ogilvie was a formidable champion of numerous social causes, including the Red Cross, child welfare, the NSW Cancer Council and the Heart Foundation. Her primary role lay in pioneering medical social work as senior almoner at Sydney Hospital from 1941–54 and as lecturer in medical social work at Sydney University from 1954 to 1965.11

Kate Ogilvie's earliest contributions to the social welfare of old people in NSW came in her capacity as an energetic leading member of the NSW Council of Social Service. In 1943 she set up a subcommittee of the Council to enquire into the 'problem' of the elderly: her findings were conveyed two years later in her essay 'Old Age in Wartime' in the Council's journal, _Social Service_ , on the problems of frail older people in wartime. She condemned the long waiting lists for admission to the huge old people's state asylums, which bore little resemblance to homes, and where many old people merely waited to die. It was tragic, in her view, to separate married couples, and to mix together people whose only disability was the infirmity of old age with inebriates and social misfits.12 Progressive reforms were needed to abolish these massive asylums in favour of independent living in people's own homes. Ogilvie noted that wartime conditions had vastly intensified all the problems of the elderly, particularly housing shortages. Moreover old age pensions were sadly inadequate to provide for the minimum needs of food, clothes and shelter. The means test was especially harsh on a generation who had suffered in the Great Depression from wages far too low to provide for a decent old age. Reform was also vital to offer medical help to frail old people with such diseases as cancer, senile dementia, heart disease and arthritis.13

Reverend S.W. McKibbin of the Newtown Methodist Mission was another champion of the elderly. He was a long-term advocate of the cause of neglected old pensioners who suffered severely from wartime conditions and slum housing: his aim was to 'expand the consciousness and widen the sympathy of the community' towards older people. He gave a 'spirited address' at a public meeting in Newtown Town Hall in 1945, describing this vital campaign as 'a test of our national character':

A civilised Nation is known by its attitude to its Old and its Infirm and judged by this test we are not very high in the scale of national achievement. Savage tribes regard old people as being in the way, and knock them on the head. We have a more refined way. We slowly starve them to death... Are we a civilised nation? Are we a compassionate people... It is a moral, a religious question. It is a question of sheer human decency.

For Reverend McKibbin, compassionate citizens had all been disillusioned by the neglect of the elderly, even by a federal Labor government: its programme for free hospitals and medicine for pensioners was good, but these should not take precedence over the plight of half-starved old people suffering from 'sky-rocket prices'. The current pension rate under wartime conditions meant slow starvation for feeble aged people: 'It is altogether unseemly to see Old Folk struggling for the right to eke out an existence.'14

Unlike the pioneering _Argus_ in Melbourne, the _Sydney Morning Herald_ failed to enter this debate about the condition of old people until late in 1951, and only then because of a wrongly perceived demographic crisis. As in Victoria, so also in NSW, the press and politicians began to worry about increasing numbers of the elderly becoming a heavy drain on government resources, as life expectancy rose and pension costs soared. The growing burden of ageing dependents was inaccurately depicted as a problem for the entire industrialised world, for it was not yet clear that Europe's demographic problem was a generation ahead of Australia. However, this so-called crisis caused _The Sydney Morning Herald_ to warn in 1951 that 'the conscience of the community needs to be stirred by a frank and thorough exposure of the conditions under which many of the nation's old people live'.15

After just three editorials on the subject of old age late in 1951, the _Sydney Morning Herald_ abandoned the problem of the elderly for several years. But these three leader articles did stimulate a revealing debate among readers. The first letter in April 1952 came from Malcolm Harding, aged twenty-two, with a wife and two children. He wondered why his money and sympathy should be lavished on old-age pensioners, whose pitiful plight was due entirely to their neglect to save, at the expense of his own family.16 However, only three correspondents out of fifteen supported Harding. Jean Fox of Westmead observed that the pension was never meant to house, feed, clothe and entertain, merely to provide a bare minimum. B. Garnett of Glebe Point, aged eighty, was still living on his own savings, but believed the pension had killed the incentive to save, sending Australians 'wholesale to the dole'. R.H. Clarke of Sydney complained that many Australians accepted the pension merely because they were tired of working, though they were not honestly entitled to it.17

However, the objections to Harding's letter were far more numerous. They revealed the depth of feeling on this subject from an ageing generation which had suffered severely from war and economic depression. Most letter writers pointed out that pensioners had paid taxes for up to forty years and were entitled to this 'miserable pay-out' because they had long contributed to Australia's progress. Bank failures in the 1890s and severe depression in the 1930s had drained away their savings towards old age. A young mother from Epping cautioned: 'I would enjoin Mr Harding to think well lest he, all-provident as he is, encounters stark depression in his forties... a war in his fifties with a heavy burden on taxation; and finally extortionate inflation in his pre-retirement years.'18

The _Sydney Morning Herald_ 's subsequent editorial noted the strength of feeling on both sides, while appearing to favour Harding. The _Herald_ observed that supporters of Harding were concerned about the burden of increasing taxation to assist an older generation, at the expense of the present working generation. Indeed the editorial argued that natural improvidence was stimulated by the modern reliance on the welfare state, creating huge economic strains and detracting from Christian virtues such as charity, self-respect and family responsibility. This conservative editorial response would not have been out of place in the 1890s debate on pensions in Victoria.19

### The 'Terrifying' Sydney Social Surveys, 1955–6

New South Wales did not establish its own Old People's Welfare Council until 1957, six years after Victoria. The longer-term stimulus in NSW came from Victoria and Britain, as we have seen, but the more immediate triggers for action were the reports of two social surveys of older people in metropolitan Sydney. These were conducted in 1955 and 1956 by an unusual Sydney research organisation, called 'Social Surveys', led by Richard Hauser, assisted by his wife Hepzibah Menuhin. The surveys were initiated by the City of Sydney Medical Officer of Health, Dr O.W. Mater, who had just returned from a research visit to England to examine their progressive services for old people. The first Sydney survey was an ambitious investigation of the large Metropolitan area of 276 476 people, while the second was a more limited survey of the community of Rockdale. The two substantial reports were remarkably similar in content, commentary and conclusions, despite differences in scope. Whole sections of each were identical and much was directly drawn from Melbourne's 1954 Hutchinson Report, though without acknowledgement.20

The story of the two Sydney social surveys of 1955–6 was highly unusual. Their creator, Richard Hauser, was charismatic, intelligent and controversial: he seemingly initiated projects in their early stages, before leaving them to other researchers to complete. A Viennese Jew, he left the University of Vienna before finishing his psychology degree, to join the Jewish unit in the 8th British army. From 1945 he assisted refugees through the United Nations Relief in Rome, after learning his mother had died in a concentration camp. Hauser's experience of the holocaust left him with a passion to help the human race and heal the afflicted. Emigrating to Australia in 1948, he became a psychological researcher conducting 'social action surveys' for state government departments, sometimes more than one at a time, as he was restless and short of money.21

Hauser saw hearty debate and provocative group work as essential to stimulate the disadvantaged to help themselves. He evidently saw himself as 'part guru, part gadfly'. He conducted various surveys of mental hospital patients, the maimed and limbless association, criminals and other 'disadvantaged' groups. He evidently initiated the Sydney social surveys with volatile discussions but left other researchers to conduct the intensive interviews and questionnaires. In 1955 he made a remarkable marriage to musician Hepzibah Menuhin, sister of Yehudi, world-famous violinist, despite the Menuhin family's strong disapproval. A superb musician herself, Hepzibah became Richard's co-worker and chief assistant on the social surveys, until their return to Europe in 1957.22

The reports by Social Surveys were unintentionally revealing. Hauser's introductory statement announced that his organisation had previously examined the problems of 'other handicapped groups', such as epileptics, civilian 'cripples' and the mentally ill: he viewed the 'problems' of the elderly as the most serious he had yet studied, since they affected the entire community. The problem-focused approach of his organisation reflected Hauser's prejudiced perception of the elderly as a special 'problem', even as 'handicapped', rather than as a cross-section of all individuals in society in older age. For the smaller Rockdale Survey, 400 old people over sixty were interviewed in depth, using undefined 'motivation research methods' to obtain case histories, rather than questionnaires. Hauser's 'sympathetic' interviewers ran into 'unexpected difficulties', as the Survey text admitted: 'suspicion' was common among the old people in Hauser's sample, who often 'distrusted our motives, or suspected we were government agents in disguise'. The older people doubtless objected to their depiction as 'handicapped', and resented provocative questions. The Survey admitted that gaining the old people's confidence was a formidable task, which slowed down the interviewers and delayed completion of the research. In addition, six group discussions were held across metropolitan Sydney with representatives of old people's organisations, who were described as often 'obstructive'.23

Richard Hauser was deeply indebted to the 1954 Hutchinson Report on Victoria, though he did not acknowledge it or mention it by name. Both Sydney reports were heavily influenced by the Hutchinson Report's early theoretical chapters on the alleged breakdown of the family: 'there is no doubt that family relations have seriously deteriorated in recent years.' Young people were depicted as moving away on marriage to distant suburbs, and showing no compunction in putting parents away in homes: 'there is much dreadful and unnecessary suffering.' Not surprisingly the _Sydney Morning Herald_ pronounced the Metropolitan area survey 'quite terrifying'.24 Such obvious reliance on the Hutchinson Report probably reflected Hauser's lack of both time and money, as he was doubtless distracted by work on other surveys, and by preparations for leaving Australia in 1957.

The more limited Rockdale survey was more measured and precise, but its conclusions were equally bleak, with Rockdale described as a predominantly middle-class community in which elders suffered disproportionately. Rockdale had been chosen for investigation because its 15 per cent of older people was well above the average percentage in other Sydney communities. Despite this, older people still allegedly experienced tangible disabilities of prejudice, disinterest and even hostility. They came from a generation that had experienced the major crises of two world wars and severe economic depression, which left them with minimal income and lowered expectations. They were also people of independent spirit, so much so that many still suffered in silence rather than take the aged pension, which still seemed to them a charity rather than a right.25

Richard Hauser, or his co-workers, noted, however, that there were many happy, well-integrated old people in Rockdale, who were well-housed and healthy. Indeed 76 per cent of those over sixty-five owned their own homes and were clearly much better off than those in the inner-city slum areas. Yet, in their search for the more 'handicapped' 'problem' cases, the researchers separately interviewed eighty-four pensioners living near Rockdale railway station. Not surprisingly they found that old age pensioners living alone were often in serious straits, in poor health, with relatively high rents and only £4 per week pension. Those on a small fixed income in rented accommodation led a similarly precarious existence, with little or no money for medical emergencies and property repair. Those suffering common ailments of old age such as high blood pressure, heart disease and arthritis, faced regular payments of up to thirty shillings a week for medication. Only 10 per cent of interviewees regarded their health as satisfactory. There was a severe shortage of hospital and convalescent home accommodation for chronically ill older people, since hospitals in the Rockdale area—as elsewhere—were largely restricted to acute cases.26

Moreover, in the larger Rockdale Survey, the researchers claimed that about 75 per cent of those over sixty had no interests or activities apart from housework and the daily acts of survival: 'even if they are not immobilised by ill-health, most of Rockdale's old people are living a purposeless existence. They seem to be just waiting for death.' This sad state of affairs was attributed to compulsory retirement, since many older people, especially men, assumed their social usefulness ended on retirement, as it was impossible to develop new skills at such advanced ages. A sense of uselessness quickly developed into apathy and disinterest in the world around, and they lived 'a vegetable existence'. Of the eighty-four pensioners living near Rockdale station, sixty-two specified no interests or activities at all; many women confessed to being very lonely and many men to boredom. Only six people read books, five gardened, four were active in the church and only one visited friends. Only two of the eighty-four were members of pensioners' organisations, which they seemed to regard as pressure groups with selfish vested interests.27 There is an interesting contrast here between the Hauser criticisms of aged pensioners and the more sympathetic conclusions of Dewdney and Collings in Richmond in 1965. Admittedly there was nearly a decade between these two surveys, but clearly some of the negative interpretation lay in the eye of the beholder.

The broader Metropolitan Sydney Survey included a substantial section on institutions for the elderly, based on many group interviews at a variety of benevolent institutions, which have been examined in earlier chapters. One 71-year old man in Glebe expressed his fear of entering the Lidcombe state institution for men: 'it's next stop Lidcombe for me. That's the last stop.' The report condemned institutions in general because they removed old people from their familiar environment and way of life and separated them from the community and younger people: 'it is clear that the institutionalisation of the old must be a last resort.' Moreover NSW still could not meet the demand for beds in the huge institutions for the frail aged, which all had long waiting lists. One old man said, 'I'm an old man, not wanted, but that's nothing fresh. Elderly people are not wanted'.28

Despite their obvious limitations, these two Sydney social surveys played an influential role in the creation of the Old People's Welfare Council of NSW in 1957: by contrast its counterpart in Melbourne had been established in 1951, three years before the Hutchinson Report. The _Sydney Morning Herald_ in September 1956 published a damning editorial on the two 'terrifying reports' under a huge banner headline, 'Lives which end in poverty and fear'. The editorial concluded that 'the fate of the aged—all too often a fate of loneliness, boredom, poverty and illness—is one of the most pressing and frightening social problems of this century'.29 These two 'terrifying' social surveys in 1955–6 acted as a valuable and powerful stimulus to the Sydney community to improve the sorry lot of elderly people, though the surveys undoubtedly overstated their case by focusing on 'problem cases' and dubious 'theory'.

### The Old People's Welfare Council of NSW, 1957–1965

The two Hauser surveys served a vital purpose in highlighting the urgent need for change and recommending practical suggestions for social reform. Most important was their emphasis on the need to create the Old People's Welfare Council (OPWC) of NSW as the focal point for community reform initiatives. Top priority must be essential home-care services to keep the elderly out of the huge institutions, which should be the last resort. The Council must quickly develop clubs for all the elderly, not just the pensioners, where people could meet daily for tea, social activities, conversations, lectures, and welfare services. Meals on wheels and pre-retirement counselling must also receive high priority. Most vitally, the elderly themselves must be encouraged to take a keen interest in expanding their own horizons.30

In 1957 the OPWC of NSW, founded on the Victorian and British models, was officially launched at the Sydney Town Hall, with a challenging speech by Sir Hugh Poate, the Chairman, who acknowledged the generous support of the OPWC of Victoria. He emphasised the new Council's goal to awaken the public conscience to meet the needs of old people within the community rather than relying on institutional care.31 The first Annual Report of the new OPWC of NSW enlarged on these aims, especially in relation to domiciliary care and the urgent need for state government finance. Their aspirations to provide clubs, meals on wheels, home nursing and home helps would all be expensive. They had now established that most older people preferred to remain at home as long as possible, as this was better for the individual and cheaper for the state. Even so, it would be a challenge to persuade the parsimonious NSW government to grant the same generous subsidies as Victoria.32

The driving force for rapid and effective action from 1956 was 'Battleship' Kate Ogilvie, President of the NSW Council of Social Service. She was an outstanding leader and skilled communicator who knew how to awaken community interest, influence attitudes and promote investigations.33 She worked energetically for two years, preparing a substantial document which was ultimately accepted in 1959 as the OPWC blue-print for future action. Ogilvie's 'Report on the Needs and Welfare of Old People in NSW', first published in 1958, provided a comprehensive agenda for policy and action. The problems of old people's welfare were 'extensive, complex and urgent', with abundant testimony from doctors and clergy to the pervasive loneliness of many older people, especially those in the 'abundance of shameful slums'. Local community effort was essential to complement efforts by government, churches and voluntary bodies. Ogilvie emphasised the inadequacy of pensions in the face of inflation, especially for those paying high rents for shabby rooms. In NSW hundreds of aged people were ill-fed, ill-housed and isolated by poverty, with a hard core of severe economic deprivation.34 The problems for old people in NSW were vastly augmented by the acute shortage of affordable housing. The 1954 federal government _Aged Persons Homes Act_ had not yet improved pensioners' access to housing, since they could not afford the contributions often requested by voluntary organisations. The OPWC strongly encouraged the NSW Housing Commission to establish many more low-cost housing units suitable for older people who could look after themselves.35

Ogilvie argued that the OPWC must become 'a powerful friend to old people by stimulating public interest in their welfare', and by providing services to enable them to remain in their own homes. It was vital that accommodation, medical and social services all be provided in their own local area.36 The OPWC must extend social and medical domiciliary services, meals on wheels, district nursing and home aides. There was ample evidence that many older people welcomed opportunities to participate in the social life of the community, responding well to services offering them occupation, interest and companionship: 'Loneliness and a sense of uselessness are some of the most destructive enemies of old age. They lead to depression, inertia and ill-health.' The value of elderly citizens' clubs had been effectively demonstrated in Britain and Victoria, and they were already developing well in NSW. They should be open to all older citizens, well equipped with a range of activities, justifying OPWC requests for more generous state government subsidies.37

Building on Ogilvie's 'blue print', and the earlier models from Victoria and Britain, the OPWC of NSW advanced rapidly from 1957, despite its late start. By 1958 twenty elder citizens clubs were created in the Sydney Metropolitan area, and continued efforts were made to persuade the state government to further subsidise their work. During the first two years the clubs and meals on wheels were the major focus, with two hundred meals on wheels delivered daily, and teams of women volunteers assisting in kitchens.38 Recipients had first to be recommended for meals on wheels by a medical doctor. Old people were initially wary of the stigma of charity if they accepted meals delivered to their homes, and worried about loss of face with their neighbours. Yet the volunteers noticed 'a striking improvement in morale and physical health among the customers' after a while.39

By January 1960 the _Sydney Morning Herald_ reported in celebratory mood that the OPWC had achieved a remarkable 'softening of Sydney's heart' towards all its older people.40 The Council's Executive recorded remarkable growth and achievements in just three years, despite its late start. They had aroused the conscience of the community about the needs of older people, and stimulated the vigorous response required to resolve their problems. They had advanced locality by locality until they now had twenty-five old people's welfare committees and forty-three clubs. Home nursing was the most recent initiative in many municipal councils, to keep sick old people at home. Thirteen committees on housing were also now making more progress with cheaper housing projects for old people, with substantial contributions from Rotary. They were still pressing their case with the NSW state government for substantial subsidies for housing, clubs and other domiciliary services, in the hope it would emulate the Victorian government.41 Moreover, Old People's Welfare Councils had been established in South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania by 1960, all following the same agenda, with their primary focus on home and community care.

### The OPWC Campaign for Care of the Elderly in Their Homes

In 1965 the significant 'Sax Report' on _The Care of the Aged_ , led by Dr Sidney Sax, outlined substantial achievements in home and community welfare. Dr Sax was Director of Geriatrics for NSW from 1964, and from 1972 he established the new Commonwealth Hospitals and Health Services Commission. The report's major emphasis was still on the urgent need for state subsidies for home and community welfare, to bring NSW closer to Victoria's more generous level of domiciliary support. First priority in terms of need was 'the promotion of social well-being, the preservation of independence and of dignity, and the prevention of disability'. All efforts must be made to maintain people comfortably in their own homes, cared for by the local community, with coordinated domiciliary services, to forestall unnecessary admissions to hospitals and nursing homes. Moreover, the Council's educational and social welfare services helped to foster more informed community attitudes about the realities of the ageing process. The OPWC contributed substantially to the welfare of the elderly in the 1950s and 1960s when governments did so little and so reluctantly.42

In 1967 Ashley Ford, vice-president of the OPWC of Western Australia, raised the important issue of social image at a National OPWC meeting in Melbourne. He emphasised that it was vital that they build 'a better image of the old' as independent and self-reliant, living in their own homes and looking after themselves. The OPWC should aim to encourage self-reliance and 'make the old look and feel proud to be old', rather than poverty-stricken and dependent, when they were all living in an integrated community. The following year Bert Martin, the president of the Queensland OPWC, reinforced the importance of a positive social image. The community tended to see older people as a separate class of charity cases, whereas a large proportion of older people were financially independent, living at home and playing an active role in the community. Indeed the OPWC already organised senior citizens clubs, home nursing, meals on wheels and other services to keep people in their own homes and involved in the community.43

Dr Richard Lefroy of the WA Department of Public Health Geriatric Service made a significant contribution to the campaign for home care for older people in a leader article in the _Medical Journal of Australia_ in June 1970. He was alarmed by 1970 at the lack of progress in provision of home-care and home nursing, and the dearth of effective funding and services to keep old people in the community. Unlike some medical specialists Dr Lefroy believed strongly that older people should remain in their own homes, integrated in the community for 'successful ageing'. He considered Australian society still relatively ignorant about older people, assuming they were likely to be dependent and incompetent. In Dr Lefroy's view, successful ageing was best experienced within the normal community, with some appropriate home-care services, not in segregated housing, retirement villages or nursing homes. It was vital to accept that ageing was a natural process which did not involve serious disease or dementia for the majority.44

The Councils on the Ageing, as they later became known, made a major contribution in their persistent campaign to lobby governments over subsequent decades to give priority and funding to care of the elderly in their own homes. Their advocacy contributed to the two States Grants Acts of 1969, providing funds to the states for home-care services, including chiropody, physiotherapy and the _Delivered Meals Subsidy Act_ of 1970.45 The Councils on the Ageing did their best to keep alive their major cause of home care in the face of vastly over-generous federal government support for ever-increasing numbers of nursing homes.

However, the various lobby groups for home care usually underestimated the toll it placed on the younger women in the family. There has always been considerable social pressure on daughters to care for frail elderly parents, with daughters-in-law sometimes taking the load. But if the formal home-care system was limited in the 1980s, it was non-existent in the fifty years up to the 1950s, as in the case of the Clifton sisters in Western Australia in the 1890s. Chapter 5 revealed that Helen McCrae spent decades as housekeeper and carer for her ageing parents, until her father's death in 1927 when she was aged fifty-three. Formal home care was still negligible for the Palmer family from the 1920s to 1964, when two generations of Palmer daughters nursed elderly parents at home for substantial periods. In 1962, Jean C. of South Yarra, a prospective housekeeper, wrote to Aileen Palmer, who was primary carer for her mother, Nettie, that she understood only too well how 'terrible' it could be to care for a very old mother, having done so herself. Yet she believed that sensitive daughters like Aileen had a duty to care for their own parents, 'however much you may recoil against the obligation. It seems to be the lot of daughters to look after mothers or fathers: seldom do sons have to do it'.46

Valerie Braithwaite emphasised the toll this 'burden of care' took on primary care-givers in the 1970s and 1980s, in terms of privacy, family life, employment prospects and personal health: 'they experience feelings of helplessness and loss and grief at what lies ahead.' They often felt guilty, helpless and exhausted and suffered silently 'in the belief that care giving is their responsibility and theirs alone'.47 In her book _Aged Care_ in 1998 Diane Gibson reinforced these observations on 'the feminisation of ageing', noting that women were the majority among both the aged population and formal carers. When policy makers wrote of community care or family care, in practice this meant care by women who constituted the informal care network. It was expected that women would provide most home care for the elderly at no cost to the state, as a labour of love, though at considerable emotional, physical and financial cost to themselves. The traditional sexual division of labour was still influential in aged care: women's unpaid family labour ensured that many frail older people were cared for at home.48

The NSW Council on the Ageing published a significant report on _Health, Welfare and Family in Later Life_ by Hal Kendig, Diane Gibson, Don Rowland and J.M. Hemer in 1983. These enterprising social scientists had established an Ageing and the Family Project at the Australian National University in 1980, and carried out a survey in 1981 of 1050 people aged over sixty living in the Sydney community. This included a substantial section on home and community care. The survey found a severe shortage of resources to fund home care and home nursing services; these had restrictive eligibility conditions and were limited to a few brief visits weekly, regardless of need. Home-care services were so restricted and thinly spread that many frail or disabled older people faced a choice between family support or a nursing home. Older people generally did not even request formal home-care services, because they lacked information, and assumed strict eligibility and long waiting lists applied. Very few respondents to the survey even used meals on wheels or home housekeeping.49

The Ageing and the Family project emphasised that in practice 'community care' meant family care rather than community services, and home care meant care by a spouse, daughter or daughter-in-law. Those older people without supportive family had little assistance from formal or informal services and were greatly over-represented in nursing homes. Most old people lived on little more than the age pension, so they could not afford paid assistance with household and gardening tasks, transport and shopping.50

The ANU Ageing and the Family survey for Sydney was paralleled by a substantial project conducted by the Australian Council on the Ageing, published as _Older People at Home_. In 1981 more than two thousand people over sixty in Melbourne and Adelaide were interviewed in their homes. Almost 30 per cent of respondents were widowed and 63 per cent still married: 73 per cent lived alone or with their spouse and 75 per cent were home owners. About 63 per cent reported a chronic illness or disabling condition. Those receiving welfare sector assistance were mostly older than seventy-five and living alone. Spouses, daughters and daughters-in-law provided most household help. Welfare sector services assisted with delivery of meals, but were otherwise 'the least significant source of assistance with the domestic tasks' and rarely provided other help. Though 10 per cent of respondents were handicapped, only 3.5 per cent received any help with domestic tasks from the welfare sector, most being cared for by spouse or daughter. Most elderly people wished to stay in their own homes as long as possible, and most were 'vigorously independent', belonging to a network of relatives but needing help in heavy housework, transport, shopping and gardening.51

The influential McLeay Report of the Commonwealth House of Representatives in 1982 recommended that substantial funding be re-directed from nursing homes to home-care and hostels, with ceilings on increases in nursing home beds. Even if this recommendation doubled the cost of home-care and community services, it would still amount to less than 20 per cent of current excessive expenditure on nursing homes. The Report recommended the provision of many more hostels, as twice as many older people preferred them to nursing homes, for those needing some assistance but not full-time nursing care. Above all, the McLeay Report proposed the rationalisation of all existing home-care services into an Extended Care Program, to end the fragmentation of responsibilities across departments and levels of government. It also recommended the creation of multidisciplinary assessment teams in all regions, with old people receiving specialist geriatric care when required. An Office of Aged Care at the Commonwealth level was also needed.52 Most of these valuable proposals were eventually acted upon, but not until the later 1980s as we shall see.

### Notes

1 Ogilvie, 'The Welfare of Old People', Sept. 1951.

2 ibid.

3 Mathias, Jan.–Feb. 1952.

4 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 17 June 1953, 1 April 1949; Bennett, pp. 80–2.

5 Norris, p. 95ff; _Herald_ (Melbourne), 1 April 1959, 25 April 1951; _Argus_ , 15 Sept. 1950; 20 April, 1 May 1951.

6 OPWC of Victoria, Annual Reports, 1952, 1953, SLV.

7 ibid., 1955–56.

8 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 17 June 1953, 3 June 1955, 29 Aug. 1956.

9 ibid., 10 May 1957, 24 Nov. 1958.

10 Donovan, pp. 30–9.

11 Lawrence, John, _ADB_.

12 Ogilvie, 'Old Age in Wartime', Feb. 1945.

13 ibid.

14 Council of Social Services, 'Australia's Reproach!', Address at Newtown Town Hall, by Rev. S. W. McKibbin, 1945, MS 2929, K48899, ML.

15 _SMH_ , 27 Sept., 14, 20 Oct. 1951.

16 ibid., 4 April 1952 (letter from Malcolm Harding).

17 ibid., 7, 8, 11, 12 April 1952.

18 ibid.

19 ibid., 12 April 1952.

20 [Hauser], _Report of The Living Conditions of the Aged in the Sydney Metropolitan Area_ [hereafter _Sydney Metropolitan Area_ ], (c. 1955–56); _Report of the Living Conditions of the Aged in the Municipality of Rockdale_ [hereafter _Rockdale_ ], July 1957.

21 Kent, passim.

22 ibid.

23 [Hauser], _Sydney Metropolitan Area_.

24 ibid.; _SMH_ , 13 Sept. 1956.

25 [Hauser], _Rockdale_ , pp. 6–7.

26 ibid., pp. 16–24.

27 ibid., pp. 7–11.

28 [Hauser], _Sydney Metropolitan Area_.

29 _SMH_ , 13 Sept. 1956.

30 [Hauser], _Rockdale_ , pp. 29–39.

31 _SMH_ , 8 May 1956; OPWC of NSW, First Annual Report, June 1957, MS 2929, K48899, ML.

32 ibid.

33 Parker, Norma, pp. 3–8; Lawrence, John, _ADB_.

34 Ogilvie, _Report on the Needs and Welfare of Old People in NSW_.

35 ibid.

36 ibid.

37 ibid.

38 Bowen.

39 _SMH_ , 30 Aug. 1957; OPWC of NSW, Annual Reports, 1957–59, MS 2929, K48900, K48899, K48901, ML.

40 _SMH_ , 21 Jan. 1960.

41 NSW Council on Ageing, 1960, MS 2929, K48900, 48901, ML.

42 Sax, _The Care of the Aged_ , Aug. 1965.

43 National OPWC, AGM, 13 Nov. 1967 (Ashley Ford, 'Economic security for the aged'), SLV; _Courier Mail_ , 13 Mar. 1968.

44 Lefroy, 'Expectations in Old Age', pp. 1275–81.

45 Gibson, Diane, _Aged Care_ , p. 32.

46 Jean C, South Yarra, to Aileen Palmer, 10 Dec. 1962, Palmer Papers, MS 6759/1/1/1, NLA.

47 Braithwaite, 'Coming to Terms with Burden in Home Care', pp. 20–3. See also Braithwaite, _Bound to Care_.

48 Gibson, Diane, _Aged Care_ , pp. 24–6, 15, 71–6.

49 Kendig, Gibson and Rowland, _Health, Welfare and Family in Later Life_.

50 ibid.

51 ACOTA Report, Dec. 1985.

52 McLeay Report, 1982.

## 9

## Geriatric Medicine: Early Achievements and Disappointed Hopes, 1954–1972

This chapter explores the history of geriatric medicine in Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s, through the experiences of three dedicated medical pioneers, Dick Gibson, Sidney Sax and Dick Lefroy, and one determined hospital matron, Muriel Doherty. Their significant contribution is illuminated by the books and journal articles of the doctors, and by the matron's home-made scrapbooks. Geriatric medicine in Australia deserves a book in its own right: indeed, Cecily Hunter has already provided a comprehensive and valuable picture for Victoria.1 The term 'geriatric medicine' was coined in the United States in 1909 but it had little impact in Australia until the 1950s. Several pioneer doctors preferred the term 'rehabilitation medicine' for older people, as 'geriatric medicine' had unfortunate connotations, especially in connection with the large benevolent institutions.

The focus in this chapter is chiefly on geriatric medicine in New South Wales and Western Australia between 1954 and 1972, and on the contributions of several inspiring leaders. An important feature was the vital role of the new profession of social workers who demonstrated, in practice, the need to combine the social medicine of old age with rehabilitation medicine. They were proud of their contribution and often idealistic, seeing themselves as independent community workers, acting as patients' advocates. However, despite early achievements, progress in geriatric medicine in the 1970s and 1980s was weakened by bureaucratic obstacles, a conservative medical culture, and relentless government expansion of nursing homes at the expense of rehabilitation medicine.

### The Rapid Increase in Frail Elderly Patients in Acute General Hospitals from the 1950s

A useful commentary on the increasing emphasis on long-stay elderly chronic cases in acute general hospitals came from the Royal Perth Hospital in the late 1950s. Professor Eric G. Saint analysed statistics on 1908 consecutive admissions to a medical unit in this general teaching hospital from 1956 to 1959 in the _Medical Journal of Australia_ in 1960. Saint emphasised that modern treatment was keeping patients alive much longer, while many more people were now in the age groups most susceptible to chronic respiratory disease, cancer and cardiovascular disease. As many as 40 per cent of admissions were drawn from the older age groups living in the poor inner suburbs. Half of the patients were aged over sixty years and one-quarter of the morbidity occurred in those over seventy; thus 'the physician of today needs must be a geriatrician'. Male morbidity became significant past fifty years of age, whereas in females this was delayed by a decade. Morbidity rates were higher among old-age pensioners, the unemployed and the socially and mentally unfit.2

Saint's statistics identified an urgent new problem in the acute general hospital of the 1950s. It was no longer just a hospital for acute cases: long-stay chronic illness of the elderly accounted for 25 per cent of medical admissions and this proportion was certain to rise. Eighty-five of the 1908 patients remained in Royal Perth Hospital for more than sixty-one days, including about 40 per cent suffering from cardiovascular disease. One-third of these eighty-five long-stay patients died in hospital, including a large number of terminal cancer cases. Saint noted that it had become necessary to keep so many elderly infirm patients in a teaching hospital for this long due to an absence of beds elsewhere, and because they needed expensive, skilled medicine. The mortality rate for all 1908 admissions was 16 per cent in males and 13 per cent in females: the chief causes of death accurately reflected the order in the Registrar-General's statistics, with heart disease first, cerebrovascular accidents second, cancer third, and pneumonia and bronchitis last. Saint concluded that the demand for acute hospital beds would continue to increase over the next half century as the population aged and more people entered the heavy morbidity age groups: 'With more intensified urbanization of our society and with the cure and prevention of infection in the very young, the volume of genetic and psychogenic morbidity in the later decades of life may increase in future years.'3

Saint's prediction proved correct. In 1960 Dr C. J. Cummins reported to the NSW Department of Public Health on the daunting new problem posed by the rapid rise in numbers of elderly patients with degenerative diseases. He stated that the care of frail old people had been a problem across the decades, but was now accelerating because those aged over sixty-five years were increasing faster than those of working age. The frail elderly could not contribute to material prosperity and were sometimes seen as an intolerable social and economic burden on productive family members. A major problem was the lack of appropriate institutional accommodation for the elderly with long-term illness, reinforced by the growing belief that hospital beds should be more efficiently used for acute cases. Dr Cummins' solution was to 'condition the community conscience' to care for a larger proportion of the chronically ill and dying at home, through a community educational program. Current trends should be reversed. But other doctors, including Eric Saint, argued that home care was not suited to the constant, specialised medical care of the incapacitated and dying elderly, and that relatives often lacked the time, the expertise, the resources and the willingness to undertake it.4 This fundamental debate about the appropriate location for long-term and terminal care of elderly people with degenerative diseases continued for the next half-century.

### Matron Muriel Knox Doherty (1896–1988): Pioneer and Lobbyist for Geriatric Medicine in the 1950s

Born in 1896, Muriel Knox Doherty completed nursing training at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney where she became sister-in-charge. In the early 1930s she moved to Britain where she worked as a private nurse and travelled extensively in Europe, before returning to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. In 1945 Muriel Doherty joined the United Nations Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and became matron of the recently liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany for a year.5 The _Sydney Morning Herald_ reported that Matron Doherty would have to care for 10 000 patients in appalling condition in the 'notorious German horror camp'.6 She responded well to this daunting challenge. On return to Australia in late 1946, she was one of four founders of the NSW College of Nursing.

By 1955 Muriel Doherty was approaching the age of sixty. This may have influenced her change in direction towards aged care, as her formidable energy shifted to this new challenge, together with her close friend Miss Helen Budd Hetherington, who had been matron of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in the 1940s. From 1955 to 1957 the two distinguished former matrons embarked on a two-year research tour of Britain and Scandinavia to investigate and report back in NSW on pioneer developments in geriatric medicine.

The inspiration for the two Australian matrons was the pioneering work of Dr Marjory Warren, who was in 1935 a junior resident at the West Middlesex Hospital in England. Dr Warren was asked to take charge of about 700 miserable and mostly bed-bound people, in huge dismal wards in what was a former 'poor law' infirmary—the English equivalent of Australia's Lidcombe or Newington State Hospitals in the 1930s. Over five hundred of these patients had been confined to bed for up to twenty years. English doctors assumed these patients were incurable and untreatable and largely ignored them, to focus on more rewarding acute cases elsewhere. As Dr Warren worked with these older patients she learned that they often suffered multiple and complex problems, but many were far from hopeless, and improvement was often possible with careful diagnosis and active rehabilitation. Indeed Dr Warren succeeded in rehabilitating about 200 of her original patients and transferred another 150 to more appropriate treatment in psychiatric wards.7 Subsequently, special geriatric units were established in general hospitals under the British national health system.

Throughout her two-year investigation of geriatric medicine in England and Scandinavia in 1955–1957, Muriel Doherty was a highly effective lobbyist who maintained a steady correspondence with influential contacts in Australia, including W.C. Wentworth and William McMahon, Federal Minister for Social Services. McMahon was impressed by the British work in the field, but rightly feared it would prove more challenging in Australia because of the three levels of government and the lack of uniformity across states.8 Muriel Doherty told W.C. Wentworth, one of the few politicians who actively supported the cause of older people, that she had found a new challenge, 'something tremendous and almost limitless' which had 'gripped' her imagination.9 Copies of her voluminous correspondence were lovingly conserved in her homemade scrapbooks.

Muriel Doherty and Helen Hetherington returned to Australia for a hectic two years from 1957 to 1959, when they worked intensively to introduce the British model of geriatric medicine to NSW. Muriel Doherty prepared ten detailed reports on various aspects of geriatric medicine, which she later integrated into a booklet on 'Caring for the Elderly', sold at Dymocks bookshop for 2s/6d. The two matrons had some early success at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) in Sydney, where both had worked previously. In characteristic manner, Muriel Doherty sent Dr Selle, the medical superintendent of RPA, a substantial draft proposal for a pilot scheme for a geriatric unit, 'to educate' his hospital medical board. She emphasised that such a unit should ideally be an integral part of an acute general hospital: for investigation, early diagnosis, treatment and active rehabilitation, supported by efficient home care services.10 Muriel Doherty pressed her case at several meetings with Dr Selle, who finally agreed to the geriatric rehabilitation centre. In September 1957 the _Sydney Morning Herald_ announced that the RPA would commence building its £100 000 geriatric rehabilitation centre almost immediately, as the first major regional unit in NSW. Half the money was already raised.11

Meanwhile Muriel Doherty bombarded the press, politicians, and hospitals with copies of her booklet, 'Caring for the Elderly', and delivered numerous lectures. In March 1958 she told a meeting of the Hospitals Association of NSW that the state was twenty years behind many European hospitals in providing appropriate diagnosis and rehabilitation for frail older people, which would enable many to return home. Her speech received due prominence in the _Sydney_ _Morning Herald_.12 Doherty gave numerous lectures on geriatric medicine and nursing, including a paper at the Pan-Pacific Rehabilitation Conference in Sydney in 1958. She was especially influential with the Federal Women's Committee of the Liberal Party, which had invited her to speak on geriatric medicine in Canberra in October 1957. The conference aimed to establish in NSW geriatric units similar to those in England, with patients classified and accommodated according to special needs.13 Matron Doherty explained that:

The modern view is that the term 'chronically ill' is no longer appropriate. While some conditions are incurable, they are still capable of improvement, and an active medical approach will enable many patients suffering from them to become reasonably independent once more.

Careful diagnosis was essential, combined with maximum activity and exercise as appropriate and training patients to a degree of independence. Stress was laid on 'wellness not illness', and 'bedfastness' discouraged.14 Muriel Doherty's determined lobbying for geriatric medicine from behind the scenes is now largely forgotten, but it raised the profile of the new discipline in Sydney. Her contribution may exemplify the work of the many women—nurses, social workers and volunteers—who contributed generously to early progress on aged care, but left no records or scrapbooks.

### Dr R.M. (Dick) Gibson, Pioneer of Geriatric Care in Australia: The Newcastle Experiment, 1954–1980

Many of the progressive ideas Matron Doherty gathered from Europe in 1955 were already a reality at the NSW Royal Newcastle Hospital from 1954, under the dynamic leadership of Dr Richard Maxwell Gibson. This so-called 'experiment' or 'experience' was the first in Australia to offer comprehensive rehabilitation facilities that included hospital, half-way house and home care. Richard Maxwell Gibson introduced a remarkable 'experiment' in geriatric medicine at the Royal Newcastle Hospital from 1954 until his untimely death in 1980. Dick Gibson was a staff physician and later director in the hospital's medical department from 1954, and subsequently head of geriatric medicine from 1970. He had the seniority and authority to establish this new, progressive approach to care of the elderly from a secure general hospital base. Dr Gibson also had the full support of Dr C.J. McCaffrey, the medical superintendent of the hospital, who was an able leader and outstanding administrator.15 In Victoria, by contrast, medical practitioners in geriatric medicine tended to lack this authority and prestige, and were restricted by a medical hierarchy which viewed geriatric medicine as inferior in status, value and resources.

Dick Gibson established Newcastle as the cradle of geriatric medicine in Australia, setting the highest standard and leaving an indelible impression. The Newcastle 'experiment' had substantial influence in NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and in the ACT. Dr Gibson pioneered a total service for old people, social as well as medical, which coordinated the facilities of the acute hospital with those of the community and home care. Many in the field have seen it as the ideal model. This has certainly been the direction taken in Australia in aged care since the 1990s, but there were wasted opportunities in the intervening decades.

Dick Gibson's pioneering initiative in geriatric medicine commenced with a 1950 survey he conducted with Grace Parbery, one of the influential new profession of social workers. Together they evaluated the medical and social needs of patients with disseminated sclerosis, recommending for them a home-care service which could usefully be extended to chronically ill older patients. Care for elderly patients was grossly inadequate, partly because they were often viewed negatively as 'blocking' acute beds in general hospitals. Late in 1954 the New South Wales Hospitals Commission permitted the Royal Newcastle Hospital to establish a radical new service for older infirm patients in their own homes. Dr Gibson argued forcefully that a strong home-care service would make family and friends cooperative rather than fearful and inadequate in the care of their relatives.16

From 1957 the William Lyne Block, four miles from the Royal Newcastle Hospital, was made available to accommodate the more challenging elderly patients requiring rehabilitation before going home. There were essentially three stages in the process, which demanded care in coordination with the hospital. Most patients were initially admitted to the William Lyne Block from a special geriatric unit of twelve beds within the Royal Newcastle Hospital: the hospital staff referred to this unit all elderly patients whose aftercare was likely to be prolonged and complex. All the resources of a large general hospital were drawn on to facilitate a multi-disciplinary medical and social diagnosis of those likely to benefit from the new rehabilitation unit. Suitable patients were then moved from the hospital to the William Lyne rehabilitation unit, while a minority returned to the general wards and a fortunate independent minority returned immediately to the community.17

Most of the older patients requiring rehabilitation went from the special hospital unit to the William Lyne rehabilitation unit, which had thirty-five beds. This was a vitally important part of the service, aimed at those elderly patients who could realistically be discharged to their homes following appropriate rehabilitation. There were two 'cheerful' adjoining wards, for men and for women, and patients were not allowed to remain in bed or be idle. Socialisation was encouraged in the 'activity room', close to the wards and attractively furnished, complete with handicrafts, community activities and music. Another room was transformed into a kitchen, where they could learn to cook and prepare their own meals. The aim was to achieve independence in the activities of daily living, including walking—a particular challenge for patients with stroke, partial paralysis or fractured hips. The physiotherapist and speech therapist visited regularly from the hospital, while the occupational therapist and nurse worked full time at the William Lyne rehabilitation unit. Relatives visited the unit to learn how to care for the patients and to receive a full report on diagnosis and prognosis.18

The average stay in the William Lyne rehabilitation unit was thirty-six days. Excellent teamwork was essential to the process, with decisions about possible discharge made only after the entire team had agreed on medical, nursing and social assessments. A patient's level of disability had to be assessed in terms of prognosis, ability to cope with daily living, and family situation. The final step in rehabilitation was the return of the patient to the community, but if discharge was too early, home care could be unsatisfactory. From 1955 to 1968 an average 67 per cent of rehabilitated patients were able to return to the community. A report on discharges from the William Lyne rehabilitation unit in 1961 revealed that out of 295 patients, seventy joined their family at home with no need for support; 105 were cared for at home by the domiciliary service; forty-nine returned to the Royal Newcastle Hospital; twenty-nine moved to a hostel; twelve to a carefully chosen nursing home; and fourteen to a mental hospital, while sixteen died in the unit. Given the age and disabilities of these patients, those results were commendable.19

Dr Gibson believed that 75 per cent of geriatric problems could be solved by home care when the assessment was appropriate. The domiciliary care team worked under the direct control of the hospital physician, but with the full cooperation of the patient's family doctor. Nursing visits could be arranged as needed, and also a housekeeping service for cleaning, washing, shopping and cooking. The patient's ability to pay determined the cost. Equipment such as wheelchairs and crutches could be supplied and necessary structural alterations to the house carried out. Each case was reviewed at intervals by the whole team, including doctors, almoner, occupational therapist and nurse. Patients in home care could return to the William Lyne unit as day visitors for one or two days a week, so the staff could help them maintain their level of activity, while the family had a day off. As Dr Gibson noted, 'the best chance of recovery to independence has been made available'.20

Part of Dr Gibson's success was due to his excellent teamwork, vital to effective geriatric rehabilitation. The most vital of his co-workers was Grace Parbery, a skilled trained social worker, with whom he had continued their essential collaboration for many years after 1950. When a newspaper reporter went to Newcastle in 1969 to 'see geriatric medicine in practice', he drove around with Dr Gibson and Miss Parbery to visit patients in their homes, using the car as their 'mobile office', with concertina files on the seats holding patients' medical history cards. Miss Parbery and Dr Gibson recorded on the dictaphone their conclusions on the social and physical condition of patients, with a copy given to family doctors.21 Such close cooperation between doctor, social worker and team members was also a mark of other leading exponents of geriatric medicine, including Sidney Sax, Kate Ogilvie and Dick Lefroy.

As Dr Bruce Ford later noted, medical practitioners could be too preoccupied with their own status and income, and disdainful of health professionals whom they deemed inferior, including those in geriatric medicine. 'The undercurrents of professional rivalries are always there', and good managers were vital to effective teamwork. Rivalry for status could at times be fierce, with junior medical practitioners relegated to what were seen as the less prestigious area of geriatric medicine. Victoria suffered more than most states from such problems, which hindered the progress of geriatric medicine there, as Cecily Hunter has shown. Drs Gibson, Sax, Ford and Lefroy were unusual in recognising the need to work so closely with social workers and other health professionals in the community to make geriatric medicine effective.22

### The Sax Report, 'The Care of the Aged': A Masterplan for Reform, 1958–1965

In 1958 an impressive social worker and community leader, Kate Ogilvie, produced a _Report on the Needs and Welfare of Old People in NSW_ , which provided valuable insights into the state of geriatric medicine in NSW shortly before Dr Sidney Sax's arrival. To an extent Sidney Sax built on Ogilvie's earlier work and shared her goals. She observed that medico-social rehabilitation could reduce the impact of disabilities among older people, permitting them to become relatively active. Three types of service were essential to achieve this outcome, always combining both medical and social perspectives. First, acute general hospitals should offer specialised medical and social rehabilitation services to restore physical functioning and facilitate return to an active life in the community. Second, and equally important were home-care services, including appropriate housing, preferably with the family; these should include meals on wheels, local doctors, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and emergency housekeepers. The third type of service, if the second failed, was a hospital or nursing home for frail old people with no families, who needed constant skilled nursing. These three services were interdependent and should be so planned.23

Kate Ogilvie noted that in 1958 the Royal Newcastle Hospital was the only hospital in the state with an excellent medical rehabilitation service for older people, pioneered by Dr Gibson. She recommended strongly that Dr Gibson's model should be followed elsewhere. Only three hospitals had developed small rehabilitation units so far, mainly for their own in-patients: the Sydney Hospital, the Royal South Sydney Hospital, and the Royal North Shore Hospital. The Royal Prince Alfred unit, encouraged by Muriel Doherty, was soon to follow. In addition, a small but growing core of doctors, nurses and social workers in NSW were working enthusiastically to extend hospital rehabilitation services. They were severely limited by minimal interest from senior medical staff in many public hospitals, and by the state government's unwillingness to provide the necessary funding. An urgent state-wide enquiry was vital to propose a master plan for reform across NSW. Kate Ogilvie advised that Lidcombe State Hospital for men, with hundreds of beds, was gradually being upgraded to provide specialised medical and geriatric rehabilitation services. Newington State Hospital for Women only offered minimal custodial care, and both institutions had formidable waiting lists.24 Overall there was considerable overlap within these limited services and huge gaps.

Dr Sidney Sax arrived from South Africa in 1960 to serve initially as deputy medical superintendant at Lidcombe State Hospital in Sydney. Within four years he was promoted to Director of Geriatrics in the NSW Department of Public Health, where he provided a massive stimulus to the development of medical and social care for elderly people. Dr Sax was a dynamic, far-sighted and energetic leader in health planning and administration in Australia, at both state and federal levels. He had a remarkable knowledge of post-war developments in geriatric rehabilitation in Britain, Scandinavia and the United States, which he applied to his analysis of necessary reform in Australia. He was frustrated by the fragmentation of health services in Australia, split between multiple authorities, state and federal, with neither having a definite responsibility: 'a disproportionate interest has been shown in some services and others have suffered comparative neglect.' Indeed in the 1960s and 1970s, Dr Sax's own area of specialisation, geriatric medicine, was sadly neglected in favour of nursing homes. He recognised quickly that funding for medical services in Australia came from too many sources, presenting a major obstacle to overall methodical planning and coordination.25

Sidney Sax was committed to improving the healthcare of the frail elderly, who were more likely to suffer than most from such defects in planning and funding. Unlike geriatric medical practitioners in Victoria, he had substantial authority but was not concerned about hierarchical status. Sidney Sax believed strongly in working closely in teams with other healthcare professionals, especially the new profession of social workers. He was wholly in agreement with Dick Gibson's pioneering model for geriatric care, and with Kate Ogilvie's 1958 report on aged care. He shared their view that good geriatric care must be tripartite, actively including the general hospital, a dedicated rehabilitation unit, and vastly increased use of home care, supported if necessary by minimal care units (later known as hostels).26

Dr Sax contributed much to the progress made in NSW in geriatric medicine in the 1960s. He believed implicitly in the value of returning disabled old people to a meaningful place in the community, in restoring their dignity, independence and mobility. However, he emphasised the need for 'accurate diagnosis if failures are to be limited'. Dr Sax was a strong advocate of skilful aged care assessment and multifaceted home care, decades before these were seen as the reform path in the 1990s. For Sidney Sax, as for Dick Gibson, geriatric rehabilitation was always as much concerned with social as with medical considerations. He aimed to reduce the reliance on institutional care for the elderly in large state hospitals and nursing homes, in favour of home care in the community.27

In the 1960s Dr Sax contributed greatly to major reforms at Lidcombe State Hospital, as we shall see later, and learned much about the multiple impediments to progressive change. When he became Director of Geriatrics in NSW in 1964, the state Cabinet agreed that a geriatric unit should be established on a pilot basis in a metropolitan hospital, and a consultative committee was appointed 'to develop an overall plan and establish priorities'.28 The outcome was the vitally important Sax Report of 1965 on _The Care of the Aged_. This drew on Kate Ogilvie's earlier report, emphasising the need for three vital interconnected services: regional geriatric hospital units, nursing home care, and home care, including social welfare services:

To promote only one of these three types of service is not realistic. The Committee has recommended that highest priority should be given to the general welfare and domiciliary services... At the same time there is a clear need for regional geriatric units to provide foci for skilled specialist services throughout the community. These services also reduce the ultimate proportion of people requiring prolonged custodial and nursing care.29

The emphasis of the Sax Report was on the need for the Newcastle tripartite system of care for the chronically sick aged to be organised throughout NSW on a regional basis, with each region covering up to 250 000 people. The aim was to achieve a master plan in rehabilitation medicine for older people across NSW. Comprehensive facilities should be developed at regional hospitals, including 'organized technical services of a diagnostic or therapeutic nature'. A medical specialist in geriatric care should direct services in each region, working from the regional hospital, following the Gibson tripartite model. The specialist should be responsible for providing geriatric hospitalisation where needed, as well as all ancillary services, such as nursing care, social work, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. A hospital geriatric unit should be created at each general hospital to provide in-patient service for physical, mental and social assessment and rehabilitation of selected patients. The unit should be closely linked with comprehensive home-care and out-patient services.30

The Sax Report aimed to place controls over the extremely rapid growth of private nursing homes in the early 1960s and over their quality of care. It emphasised the need for more intermediate hostels for old people who were unable to live independently at home any more, but did not require skilled nursing home care. Such small halfway hostels should be subsidised by the state government, in approved new accommodation, subject to a means test. The genuine need for nursing-home beds in each region should be carefully reviewed every three months by the Department of Public Health, with priorities determined by careful medical assessment. State government grants to nursing homes would depend on the outcome of such reviews. Above all, first priority in nursing homes must go to the protection of social well-being, and the preservation of independence and dignity.31

This far-sighted but doomed Sax masterplan of 1965 foreshadowed some of the major reforms from the 1980s. But twenty years were lost and Sax reported sadly in the 1980s on the rejection of his ambitious Report:

The ideas in that [1965] Report were incorporated into a comprehensive submission presented without result to the Commonwealth Department of Health in 1968, and the recommendations were repeated in 1973 from the Research Committee of the Hospital and Allied Services Advisory Council. The principles eventually found their way into the aged care reform strategy that has been implemented by the Commonwealth since 1985.32

Sidney Sax's bleak retrospective sentences speak volumes about the failures in state and federal aged care policy in the twenty years after 1965. The NSW Council on the Ageing, a strong supporter of the Sax Report, blamed 'the politico-economic issues between the states and the commonwealth for the total breakdown'. The crucial issue was the deadlock on the division of responsibilities for financing the recommended program between federal and state governments.33 This deadlock continued to blight progress in aged care for many years after 1965.

### The Modernisation of Lidcombe Hospital in the 1960S

Despite intense disappointment at the ultimate rejection of their 1965 master plan, Sax and his colleagues did at least succeed in the lesser goal of transforming the former Lidcombe State Hospital and Home for old men. Severe funding constraints obliged state governments to work with existing institutions and outdated buildings in their efforts to develop rehabilitation services for older people. Such units were established in some acute hospitals, such as Royal Prince Alfred, in the former state hospitals, and even in obsolescent tuberculosis sanatoriums.

The huge Sydney institution which had to carry the major load of rehabilitation for the elderly was inevitably Lidcombe, which began its life in 1893 as Rookwood Asylum for the Aged and Infirm, overlooking Rookwood Cemetery. It became Rookwood Asylum and State Hospital in 1913, and was massively overcrowded and understaffed throughout two world wars and a severe economic depression. 'Hundreds of old men [were] herded together, human flotsam... The wards are filled with old men, weak, sick, tortured, dying.'34 Little improvement was possible during the war and inter-war years, though there was another change of name in 1927 to Lidcombe State Hospital and Home. Efforts at reform and modernisation began slowly in the 1950s, with the major transformation to Lidcombe Hospital in the 1960s and 1970s. The challenge in the 1960s was great. Former destitute asylums lacked the glamour, funding and facilities of modern acute hospitals and work for the staff could be heavy, with morale often fragile.

Dr C.J. Cummins, Sax's predecessor as Director-General of Public Health in NSW, produced a report on old people's welfare in 1960. This report highlighted a new programme of geriatric medicine to be established at Lidcombe State Hospital, initially intended as the hub of state-wide rehabilitation reform. Dr Gibson's Newcastle experiment was taken as the model, with patients carefully assessed for potential for rehabilitation.35 This ambitious proposal for Lidcombe had its critics, given the former asylum's sombre history. Dr Alan Lane sent a letter to the _Medical Journal of Australia_ in 1960 warning that Lidcombe was in no position to attempt modern geriatric medicine, since it was still deficient in the ordinary facilities of social and physical medicine.36 However, geriatric specialist Dr Bruce Ford later observed that, though Lidcombe in the 1960s indeed bore the stigma of its origins as a benevolent asylum, there was still hope:

These second-rate citizen-institutions are meant to house the physically dependent who are poor, and all of them have waiting lists... And yet, it is from such unlikely roots all over the western world that the seed of geriatric medicine and the philosophy of rehabilitation have flourished.37

Lidcombe Hospital's transformation in the 1960s was facilitated by several impressive geriatric medical specialists, including Dr C.J. Cummins, who initiated the process. The British influence on aged care in Australia was once again substantial. Dr Gary Andrews and Dr G.S. Procopis had both trained with pioneers of British geriatric medicine before returning to become medical superintendents at Lidcombe. Most significant was the energetic leadership of Dr Sidney Sax, who was enthusiastic about Dr Dick Gibson's pioneering work in Newcastle and keen to replicate his model as far as funding permitted. Sax shared Gibson's belief that the wellbeing and rehabilitation of the elderly depended as much on social considerations as on biomedical and behavioural issues. New South Wales had an important advantage over Victoria in that first class specialists in geriatric medicine were in full charge of regional hospitals such as Lidcombe.38

The change of name from Lidcombe State Hospital and Home to Lidcombe Hospital in 1966 acknowledged its new role as a comprehensive rehabilitation hospital service, with a clinical investigation unit. Female patients had been transferred to Lidcombe from Newington State Hospital for Women when it closed in 1964. Initially Lidcombe Hospital's doctors and social workers accepted referrals from medical practitioners and utilised Lidcombe's facilities for assessment and rehabilitation.

In 1969 a journalist, Helen Frizzell, wrote a substantial article for the _Sydney Morning Herald_ comparing nursing homes with modern geriatric care, to the detriment of the former. She focused on the excellent, caring contribution of Dr Geoffrey Hughes, then Superintendent at Lidcombe Hospital. Dr Hughes explained that in 1969 Lidcombe Hospital had the only major geriatric rehabilitation unit in Sydney. Admittedly Lidcombe's asylum heritage meant that 300 of its 800 beds were still in a separated 'home section' for frail and disabled elderly men who could not be rehabilitated. But the other 500 beds were devoted to modern methods of rehabilitation and long-term geriatric nursing care. Lidcombe Hospital now boasted twenty salaried full-time medical officers, a fine modern surgical department, excellent diagnostic and assessment facilities, and well-staffed rehabilitation wards.39

Dr Hughes explained to Helen Frizzell that acute hospitals focused on disease, whereas geriatricians treated 'the whole man', taking into consideration his social background as well as his physical and mental states, with a view to improving his future capacity. At Lidcombe Hospital they used the terms 'rehabilitation' or 'retraining', as the term 'geriatric' had unfortunate connotations in a former 'old men's home'. In 1969 Lidcombe Hospital's emphasis was on rehabilitating the elderly from within the hospital to live as independently as possible at home. They hoped eventually to develop a home-care system within the family and community, on Dick Gibson's model, when funding and government support permitted; meanwhile they already had a day hospital run on Gibson's lines, but within Lidcombe Hospital. These distinctions were due largely to the limitations posed by the antiquated asylum system they inherited, whereas Gibson had the advantage of building a new system from scratch.40 Lidcombe Hospital worked closely with an integrated team of general practitioners, social workers and occupational therapists, who visited the patient at home, to assess the situation and the patient's needs. Inside the hospital they taught patients how to become functionally independent again, so they might return home if possible.41

New South Wales was fortunate in having several outstanding leaders in geriatric medicine, who were capable of making advances despite the bureaucratic and funding obstacles. Lidcombe Hospital's transformation was possible, in part, because its medical superintendents and deputies were physicians of the stature of Drs Sax, Hughes, Andrews and Procopis. By contrast with the relative success of geriatric medicine at Royal Newcastle and Lidcombe Hospitals, Cecily Hunter has documented the obstacles encountered in similar efforts at Mount Royal in Victoria which, like Lidcombe, was also a shabby, overcrowded former benevolent asylum in the 1950s. The creation of a modern geriatric service within such a challenging setting required a complete cultural revolution, which proved less feasible in Victoria than NSW. In NSW and Western Australia geriatric specialists were appointed as directors of rehabilitation services for older people. By contrast the new breed of geriatric doctors in Victoria were isolated outsiders in a parochial medical world which offered obstruction and delays rather than support. Geriatric physicians in Victoria lacked control, even of admissions policy, which was still determined by waiting lists, depriving them of authority to select patients suitable for rehabilitation. Efforts were made to renovate antiquated wards and establish geriatric units within Mount Royal, but the term 'geriatric' still carried unfortunate connotations and with some justification.42

Cecily Hunter demonstrates that the new culture of geriatric medicine fought a losing battle in Mount Royal in the late 1950s and early 1960s against the old charity model for care of older people. The large benevolent institutions in Victoria were still run by the Hospitals and Charities Commission and by voluntary elected committees of management. These were public-spirited members of the community, whose ideas tended to be too conservative to accommodate the progressive interests of young medical professionals with an entirely new approach to the care of older people. The management committees were also concerned about the most economical use of public funds, tending to give priority to medical needs in acute hospitals. Since the new geriatric practitioners had little control of admissions, the patients referred to them were more likely to need long-term bed care than rehabilitation. As Cecily Hunter observed:

By the mid-1960s the impetus of this early period [of reform] had faded. In institutions that retained many of the marks of their nineteenth-century origins, the 'geriatric patient' in Victoria was barely distinguishable from the impoverished benevolent home inmate.

Indeed, geriatric medicine in 1960s Victoria was not yet a failed enterprise, but it was at least 'a narrative of frustration and disappointment'. Only from the early 1970s were Mount Royal's facilities slowly reorganised into a modern integrated rehabilitation hospital.43

### Dr Dick Lefroy: Pioneer of Geriatric Medicine in Western Australia

Richard B. (Dick) Lefroy was born in Perth in 1918, into one of the long-established pastoral families. He served in the British army in the Second World War, and a period in hospital after an army accident prompted his decision to become a doctor. By the late 1950s Dr Lefroy was Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Western Australia and consultant to the Royal Perth Hospital. It was remarkable that a doctor with such a distinguished record should apparently sacrifice it to become a pioneer for geriatric medicine, which was little understood and low in status. Dr Lefroy has been described as influential and inspirational: such attributes help to explain how he succeeded in establishing geriatric medicine in Western Australia on the most unpromising foundations.44

The extent of Dr Lefroy's achievement is the more impressive given the level of respect for the aged suggested by the Hutchinson Report in 1954. Moreover, aged care in Western Australia before 1960 was considerably worse than in NSW and Victoria. The Sunset Home for Men established at Dalkeith in 1906 was a bleak and overcrowded asylum for 450 inmates, with rows of large dormitories known as 'the Block' nearby. In the 1950s, acute hospitals, anxious to stop old men with chronic illnesses 'blocking' acute beds, transferred such cases to the Sunset Home, despite its lack of provision for serious illness. The Mount Henry Home for Women, holding 350 destitute old women at Salter Point, was described by the WA Department of Health in 1943 as 'a home for low class inmates' and 'undesirable types'. The English workhouse philosophy of less eligibility still applied.45

Dr Lefroy was appointed Director of Geriatric Services in Western Australia in 1963, by Dr W.S. Davidson, head of the WA Public Health Department. Drs Davidson and Lefroy were unusual in sharing a deep concern for older patients with chronic disease who were treated so badly in the 1950s. Davidson was yet another Australian doctor inspired by a visit to Britain in 1962, which showed him that medical specialists could achieve much in rehabilitation from within acute general hospitals, supported by family doctors. Moreover, it was already clear that Australia was most reluctant to adopt geriatric medicine, preferring to invest funding and staff in nursing homes instead. Dr Lefroy was convinced it was imperative that geriatric medicine be based in large acute hospitals, but in early-1960s Perth this seemed an impossible dream. In fact Dr Lefroy had to struggle for seven tough years to achieve this goal.46

Dr Dick Lefroy had boundless enthusiasm, determination and dedication to geriatric medicine in 1963, but little practical knowledge or experience in the new field. Once again, a valuable research visit to Britain and the United States reinforced an Australian doctor's belief in the vital need for a hospital based rehabilitation service for the elderly. On return to Perth, however, Lefroy had no choice but to use the two old destitute asylums as his base, especially the Mount Henry Home for Women, south of Perth. No hospital facilities existed in the barracks buildings, but at least there was abundant space for new building. Dr Lefroy commenced his new career in geriatric medicine with the odds stacked heavily against him, no suitable buildings, and little or no initial support from the acute hospitals and their medical practitioners. The Royal Perth Hospital included a rehabilitation unit for war wounded and younger disabled people, but was reluctant to accept older people with disabilities.47

Dr Lefroy changed the title of the women's home to 'The Mount Henry Restorative Unit', but the challenge was immense, and the acute hospitals were 'bewildered and suspicious' at first. The staff at Mount Henry knew little about rehabilitation for older people, but learned quickly from the information obtained from Newcastle and Britain. Jennifer Page, another dedicated social worker in the new profession, was indispensible to the enterprise and worked closely with Dr Lefroy for twenty years, in a productive partnership like that of Gibson and Parbery. However, the two former destitute asylums were still bleak warehouses which were impossible to transform. In time 'The Block' at the Sunset Home for Men in Dalkeith became a somewhat inadequate crowded hostel for thirty-two older people, and the Mount Henry Home had the necessary space to build the Restorative Unit. Despite the inadequate buildings, Lefroy and Page quickly established a home-visiting service, following up on referrals from general practitioners. They worked together to establish a helpful management system for each patient, with careful diagnosis as the starting point. They slowly succeeded in persuading patients and family doctors of the values of rehabilitation care at home, following the Newcastle guidelines. They regarded the entire metropolitan area as their focus for consultation.48

Dr Lefroy and his team were so anxious for affiliation with Royal Perth Hospital that they slowly encroached on outbuildings belonging to the hospital in the hope of gradual acceptance. However, in 1965 Royal Perth Hospital officially established its own department of geriatric medicine, as also did the Fremantle Hospital in 1969. These new developments were a remarkable tribute to Dr Lefroy's missionary advocacy for the new branch of medicine, but also a practical setback for his hopes for his own unit. However, in 1966 the Sunset and Mount Henry Homes were gazetted as hospitals: this was a measure of their achievement and a recognition of their status, but it failed to provide the necessary acute hospital base and facilities. Fortunately good luck at last favoured Lefroy's enterprise with the conversion of the Perth Chest Hospital into an acute general hospital, since tuberculosis could now be cured. This offered an excellent opportunity for Lefroy at last to gain the much-needed entry into a large acute hospital. So in 1968 the Public Health Department Geriatric Service became an official department of the new Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, with Lefroy as its physician. A section was specially designed for 120 geriatric patients, with pleasant single rooms and carpeted floors. There were facilities for physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and a furnished flat to permit patients to carry out trials for future home care. This achievement had taken Lefroy and his team seven years of effort, determination and hope.49

Dr Lefroy disliked the term 'geriatric' which had unfortunate connotations of 'decrepit' and useless, preferring to use 'extended care' or rehabilitation. His emphasis was on continuity of care between the home, the hospital geriatric unit and the nursing home, with careful assessment throughout. Lefroy became a powerful advocate in the _Medical Journal of Australia_ for reform and reduction in the numbers of the fast growing nursing home sector, combined with greater use of intermediate hostels for frail elderly people who did not need specialised nursing. He effectively lobbied the Commonwealth government to assist in creating nursing care and rehabilitation sections for the elderly in acute hospitals in Bunbury and Albany. Lefroy also successfully argued for the creation of country hostels for the elderly in Collie, Busselton and Kalgoorlie, with continuity of care between hostels and nursing homes. His advocacy also helped to achieve a highly unusual WA government subsidy of $1 per day for approved residents in such hostels. But he had limited success in fighting the rapid increase in inappropriate use of nursing home care throughout Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, as we will see in the next chapter.50

* * *

It was scarcely surprising that such a determined man as Dr Sidney Sax sought another means to improve aged health care in Australia, given his early frustration in NSW. The accelerating numbers of nursing homes and the financial deadlock between state and commonwealth governments made progress on geriatric medicine at state level too slow and limited. Instead Sax turned his talents to the broader reform of medical care at Commonwealth level. His book, _Medical Care in the Melting Pot_ , published in 1972, analysed the condition of the Australian system of medical care, drawing on international models. He sought to move beyond 'the parade of prejudices' and the recent conflicts and deadlock.51

Following his rejected Sax Report in the later 1960s, Sidney Sax's next opportunity for major reform came with the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972, the first Labor Government since 1949. Sax was appointed chairman of a new policy-making body, The National Hospitals and Health Services Commission. From there he oversaw long-term reform of health-care delivery which included a Community Health Program and general rehabilitation services within acute hospitals. As he observed, however, the process was far too slow, uneven and frustrating: it was not until after 1985 that his principles became a practical part of a long-term aged care reform strategy. Thus by 1993 there were 120 aged care assessment teams and about one-third of larger general hospitals had established dedicated wards for specialised geriatric services.52 However, the other two-thirds of general hospitals still focused resources on treatment of acute illness, as Sax acknowledged:

Special programs for disabled old people have been slow to emerge at acute hospitals where established interests resist the diversion of any existing resources to services that are regarded as relatively unrewarding. Consequently, specialist geriatric medicine often has to be practised in detached settings that are comparatively poorly funded.53

### Notes

1 Hunter, 'Doctoring Old Age'.

2 Saint, pp. 601–8.

3 ibid.

4 Cummins, pp. 587–8; Saint, pp. 601–8.

5 Russell, _ADB_.

6 _SMH_ , 9 July 1945.

7 Thane, _Old Age in English History_ , pp. 436–7.

8 Muriel Knox Doherty [hereafter MKD] to William McMahon and to W C Wentworth, [early Sept. 1955?], MKD Papers, MS 442/2, ML.

9 ibid., (scrapbooks).

10 MKD to Dr Selle, 26 April 1957, ibid., MS 442/4.

11 _SMH_ , 5 Sept. 1957.

12 ibid., 27 Mar. 1958.

13 MKD, (scrapbooks), MKD Papers, MS 442/4, ML; _SMH_ , 21 Oct. 1947.

14 MKD, 'Gerontology' (11 page research bulletin), 19 Oct. 1957, 31 Jan. 1958, MKD Papers, MS 442/4, ML.

15 Duggan, _ADB_ ; Henry, _ADB_.

16 Gibson, R. M., 'Domiciliary Care in the Newcastle District'; Gibson, R. M., _Geriatric Service Report_ ; Gibson, R. M., 'A Comprehensive Geriatric Service', pp. 284–5.

17 ibid.

18 ibid.

19 Gibson, R. M., _Geriatric Service Report_.

20 OPWC of NSW, Address by R. M. Gibson, 1960, ML.

21 _SMH_ , 29 Oct. 1969.

22 Ford, pp. 106–8, 120–1.

23 Ogilvie, _Report on the Needs and Welfare of Old People in NSW_ , 1958.

24 ibid.

25 Sax, _Medical Care in the Melting Pot_ , p. 3.

26 ibid., pp. 83–5.

27 Sax, 'Some Thoughts on the Rehabilitation of Elderly Patients in Practice', pp. 340–2.

28 Sax, 'How it All Began—Geriatric Medicine in Australia', pp. 5–7.

29 Sax, _The Care of the Aged_ , 1965.

30 ibid.

31 ibid.

32 Sax, 'How it All Began—Geriatric Medicine in Australia', pp. 5–7.

33 _SMH_ , 29 Oct. 1969.

34 ibid., 1 Feb. 1928.

35 _MJA_ , 8 Oct. 1960.

36 ibid., 1960 (Dr Alan Lane letter).

37 Ford, pp. 81, 85–6.

38 Sax, 'How it All Began—Geriatric Medicine in Australia', pp. 5–7.

39 _SMH_ , 30 Oct. 1969 (Helen Frizzell, 'Hospital or Nursing Home?').

40 ibid.

41 ibid.

42 Hunter, 'Bureaucracy, Benevolence and Medical Innovation', pp. 1–28.

43 ibid., p. 14; Hunter, 'Doctoring Old Age', pp. 257–8.

44 Lefroy, _Geriatric Medicine, Early Policy and Practice in Western Australia_ , chs. 1, 3.

45 ibid.

46 ibid., ch. 4.

47 ibid.

48 ibid., ch. 6.

49 ibid., ch. 9.

50 ibid., chs. 7, 10, 13.

51 Sax, _Medical Care in the Melting Pot_ , passim.

52 Sax, 'How it All Began—Geriatric Medicine in Australia', pp. 5–7.

53 Sax, _Ageing and Public Policy in Australia_ , p. 72.

## 10

## Nursing Homes as Big Business, 1954–1972: 'Inappropriate Places With Inferior Care'

No government policy decision was taken to create a massive, unwieldy and costly nursing home system as the chief care option for frail old people. As Dr Richard Lefroy saw it in 1969, the 'system'—if such it could be called—grew in a disorganised way almost by default: 'haphazard selection', rather than assessment, governed the transfer of old people to 'inappropriate places with inferior care'. Anna Howe notes that in the 1960s the federal government's role in nursing home development was that of minimal intervention; the system's phenomenal growth was stimulated by complicated funding arrangements and an arbitrary division of responsibilities between the Commonwealth and the states.1

### The Failure of Frail Aged Policy in NSW in the 1950s

The _Aged Persons Homes Act_ of 1954 triggered a chorus of criticism about its sole focus on the able-bodied elderly and its failure to assist the chronic elderly sick who required supported accommodation. There was an urgent need for improved care for the frail aged due to their exclusion from acute hospitals because they allegedly 'blocked beds'. New South Wales provides a clear example of the worst state problems in aged care in the 1950s. There were long waiting lists in NSW for the 'voluntary' aged homes run by charitable and church organisations, and for the huge state institutions at Lidcombe Hospital and Newington Asylum for Women. The four home-visiting nursing services in Sydney were good but were quite inadequate for the needs of all the elderly people living alone. Emotional letters to the _Sydney Morning Herald_ in 1954 appealed for government action to assist frail aged pensioners, excluded from the new legislation, rejected by public hospitals and regarded as nuisances by private nursing homes.2

In 1957 the _Sydney Morning Herald_ published two articles on poor conditions in private 'rest homes', as nursing homes were still often called. The cheapest were essentially boarding houses for aged pensioners, charging no more than the pension. The _Herald_ staff correspondent visited a gloomy home which slept three or four to a room, but was tolerated because the owner fed the pensioners and kept a benevolent eye on them. The Health Department turned a blind eye to such homes because they catered for the poorest old people who would otherwise be homeless. Charges in more expensive private nursing homes could range from nine to twenty pounds a week, but a higher price did not guarantee quality of service, even on Sydney's North Shore. Old people's homes proliferated in the Western suburbs where they were generally shabbier and registered nurses were in short supply. Some were dirty with no sitting room and few toilets, but regulations were weak and conveniently vague about staffing and efficiency.3

The Council of Social Services and the Old People's Welfare Council (OPWC) kept a critical eye on the development of nursing homes, lobbying the NSW state government for more funding to improve conditions and regulation. In the early days the essential task of the first generation of social workers was to provide information in a confused area with minimal government control. Social worker Kate Ogilvie presented two substantial reports on nursing homes. The first was a 1954 survey of homes for pensioners on limited incomes in the Sydney Metropolitan area, requested by the Council of Social Service. This revealed a serious shortage of accommodation for frail elderly people needing nursing, with long waiting lists and many turned away. Most nursing homes limited admission by membership requirements such as church affiliations, with few offering accommodation for the general public. Most homes specified residents must be 'ambulant' with 'no sick care', while the Padstow Eventide Homes demanded 'reliable upright people, non-gamblers and non drinkers'. Kate Ogilvie argued in vain for government funding for voluntary and religious organisations to extend their useful work.4

In 1958 Kate Ogilvie produced a more detailed report for the OPWC on the services for old people in NSW who required skilled nursing, the _Report on the Needs and Welfare of Old People of NSW_. Excluding the huge state institutions such as Lidcombe and Newington, there were 191 private 'rest' homes in NSW, with imprecise regulations, receiving limited Commonwealth hospital benefits. Around 5000 old people in NSW in 1958 relied on such private 'hospitals' and homes to care for them, but standards varied greatly, with many offering minimal custodial care in dreary surroundings. There was also an unspecified number of unregistered private 'pensioners' homes' and boarding houses which took in sick people who claimed to be able-bodied. They were not licensed to nurse frail old people but often obliged. Treatment varied but was geared to passive 'comfort' rather than active medical care, aiming to maintain chronic incurable invalids rather than rehabilitate them.5

In 1960 Matron R. Tabbner gave a seminar paper expressing her strong, negative views of such homes, especially as such poor quality communal life was damaging for many. She considered it criminal to place an active, alert person in a nursing home, to live perpetually in a hospital atmosphere, ceasing to feel like an individual. It was essential to separate the elderly sick from the active elderly and treat them each appropriately. Problems were caused by the huge diversity of small groups running different types of aged-care homes in NSW, without any coordination, regulation or assessment of patients' needs and disabilities. She observed that conditions were far worse in NSW than in South Australia, Victoria or Queensland, where state governments made greater contributions to homes and hospitals. Matron Tabbner insisted that the OPWC must strengthen its lobbying for state subsidies and improved coordination between governments, hospitals and nursing homes.6

### Nursing Homes as Big Business: Escalating Numbers and Privatisation, 1963–1972

There were no long-term policies for provision of nursing homes in Australia, merely short-term responses to issues of costs and accommodation as they arose. In 1963 the Menzies government introduced a Commonwealth policy initiative which had an unexpected impact on the history of nursing homes and aged care. It amended the 1953 _National Health Act_ to provide a Commonwealth government benefit of $2 per day for frail elderly patients in approved nursing homes. The aim was laudable since private health insurance rules previously excluded them, but it had unintended consequences. This federal government contribution to nursing home funding encouraged an unplanned 20 per cent growth in new nursing homes between 1963 and 1968, with a 48 per cent increase in new beds.7

This rapid growth in nursing homes was further stimulated by the Holt government's important 1966 amendment to the 1954 _Aged Persons Homes Act_. This permitted nursing homes to receive federal capital subsidies towards accommodation for 'residents requiring continuous nursing care'. Further, whereas private nursing homes had been reluctant to admit intensive care patients, in 1968 the federal government introduced a supplementary benefit of $3 per day for bed-ridden patients, thus increasing the subsidy for such patients to $5 per day. These Commonwealth government subsidies stimulated nursing home growth, chiefly in the private sector, with half the beds administered by private enterprise, 27 per cent by religious and charitable organisations, and 22 per cent by state governments. Federal government subsidies effectively offered financial incentives to speculators to build unregulated nursing homes as low-risk investments. Costs escalated, as did the uncontrolled growth in the number of private nursing homes subsidised by the federal government.8 Western Australia and NSW provide examples of the more unfortunate impact of these funding changes on institutional care for the frail aged.

Through the 1960s the OPWC continued its pressure on the NSW government for state subsidies for church and charitable nursing homes: sick old people with limited means were currently admitted to inferior but expensive private nursing homes because of the dire shortage of cheaper voluntary homes.9 Dr Sidney Sax chaired the 1965 committee which reported on _The Care of the Aged_ , which noted that the proportion of older people was rising and the numbers needing care in nursing homes were inevitably growing. Many chronically disabled people could not afford care in expensive private nursing homes, increasing the pressure on the cheaper charitable institutions. The Sax Report recommended £4 560 000 additional state capital expenditure on nursing homes over the next ten years, especially for the more affordable charitable homes.10

The emphatic negative response of the NSW Director of Health, Louis J. Wisenholt, in June 1966, shocked Sax's committee: 'It is estimated that probably 30 to 40 per cent of all patients currently accommodated in nursing homes do not require nursing home care. They only require personal care.' Wisenholt noted that in June 1965 there were about 10 000 nursing home beds in NSW outside the large state institutions, and they cost the Commonwealth $6 490 000. Nursing homes were now largely in the hands of private enterprise, yet they represented a substantial portion of the cost of the Commonwealth National Health Scheme and the expenditure was constantly rising. People who were not nursing home cases easily obtained the necessary certificate to receive nursing home benefits: two such patients had even been discovered going to work daily.11 Far from granting further subsidies, the NSW government decisively rejected the Sax Committee's view that there was a 'dire shortage' of charitable nursing homes for the frail aged. Dr Sax's OPWC Committee members were stunned by Wisenholt's response and held an angry but futile protest meeting on 30 June 1966.12 However, Sax and his supporters were soon forced to recognise that Wisenholt was correct about the escalation of private nursing homes.

In 1968–9 the Sydney press launched a powerful attack on the mushrooming growth of major syndicates investing in nursing homes for profit. Syndicates were established among real estate investors who bought and modernised old homes as nursing homes, installed their own managers, and subsequently sold them for substantial profits. It was no accident that the critique stemmed chiefly from NSW and Western Australia, the two states which were the worst offenders. The Sydney _Sun Herald_ noted in 1968 that the boom in nursing homes had commenced in 1963, when the Commonwealth government began to pay $2 a day for frail patients in such homes. Since this subsidy had been increased to $5 a day for intensive care patients, nursing home owners were tempted to keep patients in bed during inspections to claim extra funding. In addition, owners often demanded that older people must contribute their entire pensions, as well as extra payments from relatives.13

The Western Australian situation was as bad as that in New South Wales, as Catherine Martin explained in the _West Australian_ newspaper in 1971. Nursing homes in WA had until recently been called C-Class hospitals, underlining their lowly status, with one-quarter of all Western Australians aged over eighty-five ending their days there. The numbers of C-Class hospitals had increased by 40 per cent between 1964 and 1969 because they were so lucrative for private investors, given the extra $5 per day Commonwealth subsidies for the bed-ridden. Many medical practitioners objected to investors receiving up to a 22 per cent return for a service so heavily subsidised by the government. Instead, doctors argued that governments should give more funding for aged care directly to charitable organisations and home-care, echoing the views of Dr Sax and the OPWC in NSW.14

These objections were justified. For example, Doug Moran, managing director of D.J. Moran Pty Ltd, already owned twenty nursing homes in the Sydney metropolitan area by 1969. He rose from the poverty of a coal-mining family during the Depression, leaving school at eleven to run away to Sydney and later serving in the merchant navy during the Second World War. After the war he married Greta, a hospital nurse, and together they established a Sydney real-estate agency; this agency made good profits by selling old inner-city houses and building nursing homes on cheaper rural land. Doug Moran's first serious investment in 1954 was the purchase of a sixteen-bed nursing home in McMahons Point, Sydney, which was the foundation of his business empire based on lucrative property speculation. He rose from poverty to become a powerful man with influential conservative political contacts. The Moran nursing home empire dominated the sector for many years. By the time he was sixty-eight, Moran's conglomerate included six retirement villages, twenty-two nursing homes and ten private hospitals.15

In 1969 Doug Moran gave one of his many interviews to the press to promote his thriving business and his cultivated image as a philanthropist providing comfort and 'modern care' for those in need. He was emphatic that service to older people was more than a mere business venture and his skilled staff were carefully selected, with high standards. Indeed he claimed to offer a public service by relieving the Commonwealth government of a heavy financial burden, especially as his fees were allegedly within the means of the average family.16

However, nurses, social workers, relatives and doctors all contributed to a powerful media critique of NSW nursing homes between 1968 and 1972, painting a grim picture of the 'mortuaries for the old' which terrified frail old people. Nursing home patients were said to be dazed by sedatives to suit the hospital routine as they lay unattended in crowded back rooms, due to constant staff shortages. Large operations run for profit were increasingly swallowing up the small church and philanthropic homes run by caring matron-owners.17 Averil Fink, director of the NSW Council for the Ageing, argued that big business operators were more interested in the $5 subsidies for intensive care than in encouraging activity and rehabilitation, so old people were kept immobile in bed. Modern ideas of geriatric medicine about activity and stimulation by physiotherapy and occupational therapy were ignored.18

Numerous complaints to the NSW Health Department about nursing homes were brushed aside with the response that not all homes were bad. Individuals were discouraged from registering official complaints by veiled warnings that investigations might make matters worse for their relatives. K.J. Stewart, the Labor spokesman on Health, was inundated by protests, many from nurses in inadequate homes: his motion in 1971 for an inquiry into nursing homes under the _Private Hospitals Act_ was defeated by the government. Stewart tabled numerous statutory declarations alleging malpractices, especially keeping patients sedated in bed during inspections, but to no avail.19

### The Failure of Government Aged Care Policy, 1967–1972

Between 1967 and 1972 experts in the care of the frail elderly sounded the alarm, led by social workers, specialists in geriatric medicine, and members of the OPWC. In 1967 Beryl Thomas, a medical social worker at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, alleged that Australia was shamed as a nation by the lack of appropriate care for frail old people at a price they could afford. In 'decent' nursing homes there were dire shortages of beds, money, and professionally trained people. She identified several major barriers to reform: community attitudes still devalued older people in general and the chronic sick in particular; government planning was 'too little, too late, too piecemeal'; and the lack of a total coherent policy was horrific. She called on the National OPWC to create an overall blueprint for reform and to lobby governments more forcefully.20

Beryl Thomas also condemned the highly unfortunate division of responsibilities between Commonwealth and State governments as a fundamental obstacle to progressive aged-care reform. Another barrier was the lack of money, which she related directly to prejudiced attitudes, since governments and community failed to give aged care high priority. Lack of federal financial support for vital halfway hostels and for specialised geriatric care was now a major problem, since most funding went to nursing homes. Sadly, she added that this dreadful situation left geriatric medicine as 'a Cinderella of medicine': governments evidently believed minimal nursing care for the elderly was enough. Expert geriatric care was costly as it required skilled personnel and specialised equipment. Care of the aged failed to attract high quality staff, there was a gross shortage of appropriate beds and grave variations in quality of care.21

Dr Richard Lefroy was inaugural director of the Public Health Department's geriatric service in Western Australia. It was no accident that Drs Lefroy and Sax, two well-informed critics of nursing homes, were pioneers in geriatric medicine, nor that they worked in the two states where the nursing home crisis was most dire. Indeed they represented a new approach to rehabilitative aged care, which had suffered badly over these years from the unchecked growth of private nursing homes. In the _Medical Journal of Australia_ , in October 1969, Dr Lefroy argued that governments identified only two categories of old people: those who could live independently at home, and those who needed nursing home care. In fact there were several stages of increased dependency for elderly people, with blurred lines in between. The middle group, which did not require intensive nursing tended to be overlooked, but they needed skilled geriatric assessment and care in intermediate hostels or at home. There was no proper definition or assessment of differing degrees of disability, and many people were inappropriately placed in nursing homes for want of a better alternative. The consequences were disastrous; it should be a federal government responsibility to provide and subsidise intermediate hostels for the frail aged who did not require active nursing, where they could be cared for in a domestic environment as close to normal as possible.22 Dr Lefroy did his best to implement as much of this agenda in Western Australia as he was able, as we saw in the previous chapter.

Dr Sidney Sax's influential book, _Medical Care in the Melting Pot_ , published in 1972, provided a much-needed overview of the 'current state of turmoil', with insight into the far-reaching reforms required to avert a major crisis. Dr Sax cited, with approval, Megan Stoyles' comment that nursing homes were 'a curious industry which—under present Australian conditions—must largely be run as a business yet is fundamentally a basic social service'. Spiralling public expenditure on health care was almost impossible to control because it was now seen as a basic human right, and it included a rapidly growing proportion of health budgets to meet nursing home costs. Moreover, chronic illness was rising with increasing age, as many more people now survived to become victims of degenerative disease. Dr Sax echoed Beryl Thomas's critique of the fragmentation of responsibilities between multiple authorities, leaving none with the obligation and power to plan and coordinate hospital and nursing home services. Finance flowing from multiple sources became an obstacle to coordinated planning.23

### The Scandal of Nursing Home Beds in the 1970s

In 1972 Sidney Sax cited shocking statistics on the comparative percentages of nursing home beds across the world. The United Kingdom had only ten beds for one thousand people over sixty-five and the United States seventeen, while Australia was four times as high as the United Kingdom at forty-two. Within Australia, Western Australia's provision soared to fifty-seven beds per thousand, with NSW almost as bad at fifty-five, Queensland at forty-one, and South Australia at thirty-nine. Once again Victoria was the most impressive in restraint at 28.7. These statistics suggested that between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of nursing home beds in Australia were not medically necessary.24 Sax was obliged to accept that Louis Wisenholt's statistics, which shocked him six years earlier, were not so outrageous as he once assumed.

The most disturbing depiction of an appalling situation was presented by a leader article on 'Geriatric Medicine' in the influential _Medical Journal of Australia_ in November 1972, reflecting the views of Drs Lefroy and Sax. This presented a more detailed analysis of the numbers of nursing home beds in Australia, which had more than tripled from 16 500 in 1959 to an astonishing 51 000 in 1972, of which 54 per cent were privately owned and run for profit. NSW alone had over 20 000 beds by 1972, constituting fifty-five beds for every thousand people over sixty-five. This was an exceedingly high ratio for NSW, by comparison with other Australian states, and also with Britain and the United States. Even more disturbing was the fact that 25 per cent of the older people occupying these nursing home beds had been shown not to need nursing care.25 These elderly patients were admitted for reasons other than valid medical issues.

The _Medical Journal of Australia_ presented a damning indictment of aged care in Australia. In 1972 patients were still admitted to permanent institutional care without proper assessment or classification, with no attempt at rehabilitation, and offered only superficial medical attention. There was an implied conflict between older people's desire to remain at home and the system's tendency to impose an institutional solution. However, the necessary reforms must do more than improve existing nursing homes: they must develop a comprehensive range of aged-care services including intermediate care hostels and home care, to prevent progressive dependence. Ideally they required a rehabilitation service for older people based on the model developed in Britain, with a thorough assessment scheme and regional geriatric medical services. So far in Australia there was no effective national geriatric service, though there were several exceptional isolated programs, in Western Australia and New South Wales, as we saw in the last chapter.26

In 1971 the Australian Council of Social Services criticised the artificially high demand for nursing homes due to the ready availability of federal government funding. Instead, genuine choice was needed through greater emphasis on hostels and home-based provision. Though home-care services had been extended since 1969, they were still very uneven and deplorably under-financed. They must aim for adequate and balanced provision across the different types of service. In 1971, Australia had forty-two nursing home beds per 1000 people aged over sixty-five compared with only seventeen hostel beds, whereas Britain had achieved ten nursing home and sixteen hostel beds respectively for those over sixty-five. Current assessments of individual needs and appropriate solutions were fragmentary and inadequate; the focus should be on the applicant's socio-medical situation, not financial resources. Appropriate criteria must be established to match availability with needs. They must offer a range of genuine choices and assure availability of beds for those without financial resources.27

During the early 1970s public discussion of the problems of nursing homes reached a climax. Margaret Jones' article in the _Canberra Times_ in June 1972 was influential and much quoted. She cited the statistics of the Commonwealth Department of Health to show that Australia had the most people in nursing homes per head in the world, yet: 'old people [in Australia] have rarely had it so bad.' In NSW, thousands of nursing home beds were now occupied for the wrong reasons. The Commonwealth government was reported as spending twenty times more on nursing homes than on home care and day care centres combined. Moreover, she argued that nursing homes and hospitals accelerated the process of senility, instead of facilitating rehabilitation.28 Strong letters of criticism of nursing homes were published by social workers from three Sydney teaching hospitals in the _Sydney Morning Herald_ , together with an editorial condemning the 'substandard care and downright maltreatment in some private nursing homes'.29

The _Australian_ argued in 1972 that pensioners were being forced out of private nursing homes because they could not afford cost increases of 20 per cent in just four months. Moreover, individual medical practitioners were starting to criticise the disproportionate medical resources and priority given to elderly patients: they argued that it was not cost effective for 10 per cent of the population to account for 40 per cent of the Australian medical bill, especially when many older people were non-productive.30 Such reasoning was inevitably fuelled by the well-publicised charges that one in four older people in nursing homes were not medical cases. W.C. Wentworth, then federal Minister for Health Services, who was sympathetic to the needs of older people, agreed in 1972 that 12 000 people or 25 per cent of patients in nursing homes were wrongly placed there, because there was too little funding for hostels and home care.31

### The Long Road to Aged Care Reform from 1972

Efforts were made by the Commonwealth government from 1969 to redistribute funding to encourage greater use of hostels over nursing homes, but with limited success. In 1969 recurrent 'personal care' subsidies were extended to more dependent residents in hostels, aged over eighty. The 1972 _Aged Persons Hostels Act_ belatedly gave the voluntary sector substantial capital incentives to increase their bed numbers in hostels, according to degree of disability.32 Governments were at last starting to acknowledge the advantages of hostels: they were cheaper than nursing homes with lower staff costs, but above all they were a more appropriate form of care for less dependent older people.33

From the early 1970s a proliferation of government reviews on aged care revealed increasing concern about the ineffective and piecemeal efforts to reduce and reform a nursing home industry which drained resources but lacked standards and control mechanisms.34 The Commonwealth Government Coleman Report of 1975 on _Care of the Aged_ condemned nursing home care for older people as financially unsatisfactory and far less effective for many than hostel accommodation and home care, both of which should be far better funded. It concluded that nursing homes were 'the most unsuccessful as well as the most financially unsatisfactory' of government aged-care services. It criticised the alarming oversupply of nursing home beds and the lack of appropriate assessment—all familiar arguments of the Council for the Ageing and social workers from the 1960s on.35

The 1977 Holmes _Report of the Committee on Care of the Aged and Infirm_ , commissioned by the Fraser government, repeated these now familiar criticisms of the nursing home industry, made repeatedly by the National Council for the Ageing over the years. The Holmes Committee emphasised that expenditure on aged care continued to escalate as the proportion of older people in the community rose. Commonwealth outlays on the aged had doubled from about 2 per cent of GDP in 1965 to nearly 4 per cent in 1975, despite gross dissatisfaction with services and outcomes. Long waiting lists for nursing homes continued, despite uncontrolled growth and an exceedingly high provision of beds by international standards. There was little coordination between programs and continued failure to develop effective medical assessment and geriatric rehabilitation. The report proposed to shift emphasis and funding from nursing homes to hostels and home-care services, and to consolidate the latter two services into a single Community Care program. Future programs of capital assistance for hostels and nursing homes must be cost-shared with the states, with the Commonwealth setting priorities.36

However, the outcome of the many admirable reports on aged care up to 1980 was woeful. As Anna Howe observed in 1990: 'From the mid 1970s to the early 1980s, some 8000 new private nursing home beds were established... The total outlays on nursing home care in all sectors increased more than fivefold between 1972 and 1982.' She argues that the many policy failures and abortive inquiries were partly due to the inability of bureaucratic solutions to solve complex structural problems. As Dr Sidney Sax saw it, the earlier enquiries were conducted by officials who were 'lacking in political clout'.37

Claude Forell of the Melbourne _Age_ provided a powerful indictment of this barrage of ineffective reports in December 1978 in a leading article, 'Our age of indifference'. Despite the valuable recommendations of the Holmes Committee in 1977, the federal government's latest budget had surprisingly reduced the allocation for aged hostels and halved the subsidy for home-care services. These reductions were a federal government tactic to force the hard pressed state governments to make up the difference in cost. Forell argued that the two federal inquiries had done little to end funding anomalies, divided responsibilities and poor coordination. The proposed cost sharing between the Commonwealth and state governments was the more problematical given the continuing and wide variations between the states. Victoria now had only thirty-two nursing home beds per thousand people over sixty-five, compared with fifty-two in NSW. The demand for nursing home places remained insatiable, despite Australia boasting the highest proportion of such beds in the Western world. Forell insisted that nursing homes imposed a cruel penalty on the elderly: for many, it meant avoidable distress, indignity and faster deterioration towards senility and death.38

The _Age_ condemned the more rapacious private nursing homes as a profitable industry which continued to expand, irrespective of complaints. Flagrant abuses surfaced in court from time to time, including maltreatment of confused patients without families. A huge amount of money was still wasted in subsidising patients at a higher level than was needed, to their detriment. The quality of such nursing homes still varied greatly, with some providing inadequate nursing, poor treatment of patients, unsanitary conditions and assaults on human dignity. The absurd system of federal government nursing-home benefits still removed incentives to rehabilitate the less dependent aged, since that would mean loss of the higher subsidy. Bed-ridden patients remained more profitable—an incentive to keep them in bed. About 30 per cent of patients in Victorian nursing homes would be looked after more cheaply and effectively in hostels, if more were available. Derek Prinsley, a professor of geriatric medicine in Melbourne, argued that the development of geriatric medicine would offer better community care, therapy and rehabilitation, if only governments would cease their blind reliance on 'warehousing' the elderly in nursing homes.39

### Nursing Home 'Production Lines' and Patient Experience in the 1980s

Meanwhile the _Sydney Morning_ Herald observed that Doug Moran and other nursing home entrepreneurs continued their lucrative activities. By 1982 Moran's group owned about fourteen nursing homes and three private hospitals in NSW and Queensland. He acquired the services of a 'power group' of useful people—former politicians, nurses and health administrators. This group adopted a 'production line concept', turning out nursing homes in units of one hundred beds each, allegedly applying economies of scale without sacrificing quality. Doug Moran built as many nursing homes as fast as he could afford, stating that every modern retirement village should have its own nursing home.40

But Moran and other developers had many critics, who claimed that mass production of nursing homes was tantamount to 'warehousing' old people. The Social Welfare Action Group (SWAG) was created at Sydney University to monitor the nursing-home system, with Helen Kiel, a lecturer in social work, as their spokesperson. In 1983 SWAG conducted a weekend phone-in enquiry on nursing home abuses, receiving many criticisms, ranging from physical cruelty to psychological neglect. SWAG claimed that the elderly saw nursing homes as a prison where they were doomed to die, but received no response when they asked the NSW state government to investigate. The Senate Select Committee on Nursing Homes in 1984 (the Giles Report) significantly reiterated many of the SWAG complaints about abuses, ranging from unsanitary conditions and filthy kitchens, to assaults on human dignity and misuse of drugs.41

Victor Minichiello explored the reasons why older people entered nursing homes in the early 1980s by interviewing patients and relatives—his sample of ninety patients were admitted primarily for social reasons and were mostly women, many widowed. A typical patient was a widowed woman in her eighties, with an expectation of one to four years in the nursing home. Minichiello's research revealed that families played a primary role in the admission process. Half the patients claimed that their families made the decision and they had little or no say, as few patients ever considered such a move on their own initiative. Often the family found their caring role too demanding and could not cope. Medical diagnoses from doctors were sought to legitimise a primarily social justification. Factors other than health explained over 70 per cent of reasons for the decision, though all patients had some health problems. Once inside, most patients reluctantly accepted their fate after a while. A small minority had made their own decision for entry because of increasing frailty, the death of a spouse or the illness of a caregiver. But both patients and relatives generally had negative views of nursing homes, as a final option not a desirable choice. Patients initially felt horrified, abandoned, and resentful of loss of home, dignity and possessions, with death the only escape.42

There is little direct evidence of the nature of the nursing home experience for its patients. In _This Bed My Centre_ , in 1979 Ellen Newton described her massive shock at her loss of freedom and dignity when forced into a nursing home by her sister and her doctor due to severe angina and advancing years. Ellen was most unusual in keeping a diary recording her painful and lonely experiences of a series of Victorian nursing homes. She had no hope for the future, confined within mindless, stupefying regimes, isolated from the normal world: 'you are no longer an average human being, alive with joys and doubts and fears.' Ellen had no choice about her incarceration within a series of passive institutions which made little effort to rehabilitate or care for its inhabitants.43

Another glimpse of patients' nursing home experiences is offered by Jan Carter's record of recollections of elderly Australian women, published in 1981. By then, most of Carter's subjects were well over eighty and most were lonely, 'feeling forgotten and set apart from everyday life'. They were obliged to leave their beloved homes because of disability, loneliness or need for protection. 'They have lost their privacy, their possessions and their independence', leading regimented lives in sterile surroundings. They endured a 'sense of timelessness', relieved only by the tedium of hospital routine and the prospect of a lonely death. A former domestic servant born in 1893 described her horror of the 'half-death' in a nursing home experienced by her sister, who shared a prison-like room with three others, even when she was dying: 'They all sit around a room looking at each other... my sister sits up there like a zombie', as a consequence of over-medication.44

* * *

This dismal nursing-home story only began to improve slowly after about 1985. The influential McLeay Report of the Commonwealth House of Representatives in 1982 restated the many earlier warnings that current aged-care policies were inappropriate, uncoordinated and far too costly. However, as Anna Howe cautions, we should not overstate the proportion of old people who lived in these dreaded nursing homes in 1981, since less than 3 per cent of people over sixty-five were long-term patients. Of all patients admitted, 21 per cent were returned to the community, many within two months, and the vast majority of frail older people lived in the community.45 The McLeay Report rightly deplored the continuing over-abundance of nursing home beds by international standards, and the severe inadequacies and poor funding of hostels and home-based care. These were primarily due to the federal government's ever-increasing generosity towards the funding costs of nursing homes, which offered far greater financial incentives for private capital than home care. Entrepreneurs like Doug Moran and their influential supporters were more forceful political lobbyists than the Council for the Ageing, led chiefly by female volunteers and social workers. Moreover, the federal government primarily paid for nursing homes, while the states funded community-based services, explaining the states' continuing reluctance to give adequate support to home-based care.46 The McLeay Report proposed that substantial funding be redirected from nursing homes to home care, geriatric rehabilitation and hostels, with ceilings on increases in nursing-home beds.47

As Diane Gibson explains, it was not until the major federal government reforms of the mid to late 1980s that financial incentives were used deliberately to change aged-care policy in favour of hostel and home-based care. The Labor government's social justice policy included a series of reforms known as the Aged Care Reform Strategy, implemented from 1983 onwards: 'the period from 1985 saw the virtual restructuring of residential care in Australia, and the emergence of a viable array of home and community care services.' Within the residential aged-care sector the proportion of nursing-home beds was reduced between 1985 and 1994 from 68 per cent to 57 per cent, to the advantage of hostel places. Gibson notes the significant contraction in the total residential provision, which increased the proportion of dependent older people receiving home care. Domiciliary care was expanded by the Home and Community Care (HACC) program of 1984–85 which coordinated fragmented services and increased funding and range of services. The Labor government introduced a regulatory system to improve the quality of care in nursing homes and hostels as well as the 'intensive packages of home-based care'. The aim was to redistribute funding from nursing-home beds to hostels and home care, which were less resource intensive and more appropriate.48 These federal government reforms were a turning point in aged care in Australia, and a major political and social achievement for the 1980s.

### The Demographic Time Bomb

But aged-care reform was a long, slow process which was challenged by the 'demographic time-bomb' which had finally caught up with Australia. Hal Kendig and John McCallum forecast in 1986 that by 2001 the numbers of long-stay disabled older patients in aged-care institutions would double; with a significant increase in those over eighty, and even those over ninety by 2035. Numbers of old people needing nursing-home care would rise rapidly in the future as they lived longer and as the 'baby boomer' generation reached their seventies. In 1981 old people with senile dementia already constituted half the institutionalised aged, but these numbers would soar in the future. Already in 1981 people over sixty-five were just 10 per cent of the population but they accounted for nearly 40 per cent of health-care funding. Moreover, in 1981, 80 per cent of dependent, frail older people were still cared for at home by partners or daughters, and public funding of aged home-care remained far too low. There was little hope that home-care could offer a realistic alternative to institutional care for an increasing number of old people in the future. Kendig and McCallum reached a bleak conclusion in 1986:

There is no advocate with the political clout to compete with the nursing home industry. Unless the political will can be mobilized to improve services, there will be more misuse of expensive institutional care in dealing with non-critical patients, inadequate care of older people at home, and continuing heavy burdens on daughters and other carers.49

The Liberal-National Coalition government under John Howard from 1996 used the language of intergenerational equity to justify a demand for increased self-reliance in old age. Nursing homes and hostels were amalgamated into a single residential care system, with income testing and increased up-front-fees, except for full pensioners. The Home and Community Care Program introduced client fees, requiring older residents to contribute cost of care, unless on lower incomes. As Allan Borowski, Sol Encel and Elizabeth Ozanne note: 'These measures represent a fundamental move away from the "welfarist" approach to the "neo-liberal" approach. Privatisation, reduction of government assistance and a "user-pays" strategy are the dominant themes.'50

The current discussion about aged-care reform suggests that Kendig and McCallum's warning was justified; indeed it was a substantial underestimate of the present crisis. The legacy of insufficient aged-care funding, combined with the significant increases in the numbers of frail elderly, continues to pose a major challenge for Australia's public policy. Home-based care remains the preferred option of many senior citizens, but the level of funding and range of services continue to be insufficient. If home-based care is inadequately funded then it will continue to rely too heavily on the unpaid labour of daughters and partners. Moreover, the growing numbers of frail old people over eighty will inevitably increase the pressure on residential care. The federal government's funding for residential care remains far too low a priority in view of rapid population ageing, especially the urgent need to increase training and pay for aged-care nurses.

### Notes

1 Lefroy, 'Permanent Care of Elderly People in Institutions', pp. 707–12; Howe, 'Nursing Home Care Policy', pp. 150–1.

2 _SMH_ , 4 Sept., 9 July, 9 Nov. 1954.

3 ibid., 3 April 1957 ('A Look at Rest Homes')

4 Ogilvie, _Report on Homes for Old People_ , Sept. 1954.

5 ibid., _Report on the Needs and Welfare of Old People in NSW_ , pp. 14–18.

6 OPWC of NSW, Seminar, 1960: 'Give Them a Role to Play', MS 2929 K48899, ML.

7 Le Guen, pp. 2–3; Parker, R. A., 'The Growth of Private Nursing Homes in Australia', p. 33; Parker, R. A., _The Elderly and Residential Care_ , pp. 13–16.

8 Le Guen, pp. 3–4; Kewley, p.154.

9 OPWC of NSW, Annual Report, Committee on Care of the Sick Aged, 30 June 1965, MS 2929 K48899, ML.

10 Sax, _The Care of the Aged_ , 1965.

11 Wisenholt, Louis J., Director of Health, NSW, to 'Dear Doctor' [Sax], 10 June 1966, OPWC of NSW, MS 2929 K48899, ML.

12 Committee on Accommodation and Care of the Aged, Minutes, 6 July 1966, ibid.

13 _Sun Herald_ , 1 Sept. 1968.

14 _West Australian_ , 9 March 1971.

15 _SMH_ , 23 May 1987; _Business Review Weekly_ , 10 Oct. 1994.

16 _SMH_ , 11 Dec. 1969.

17 _Sun Herald_ , 1 Sept. 1968.

18 _National Times_ , 8 Feb. 1971.

19 _Sun Herald_ , 1 Sept. 1968; _SMH_ , 27 Oct. 1971.

20 Mrs Beryl B Thomas, address to National OPWC, Canberra, 13 Nov. 1967, OPWC of NSW, MS 2929 K48899, ML.

21 ibid.

22 Lefroy, 'Permanent Care of Elderly People in Institutions', pp. 707–12.

23 Sax, _Medical Care in the Melting Pot_ , pp. 9, 19–21, 25, 83.

24 ibid., passim; _MJA_ , 8 Jan. 1972 (Dr James S Lawson).

25 _MJA_ , 4 Nov. 1972 ('Geriatric Medicine').

26 ibid.

27 ACOSS, 7 Feb. 1974, on 1971 tables.

28 _Canberra Times_ , 5–10 June 1972.

29 Kewley, p. 541.

30 _Australian_ , 15 May 1972 (Dr R Hecker).

31 _SMH_ , 15 Sept. 1972.

32 Gibson, Diane, _Aged Care_ , pp. 30–31.

33 ibid.

34 See Ford, ch. 7, for analysis of 1970s reports.

35 Clare, de Bellis and Jarrett, pp. 22–29; Coleman Report, _Care of the Aged_ , pp. 126–131.

36 Holmes, A. S., _Report of the Committee on Care of the Aged and Infirm_ , 1977.

37 Howe, 'Nursing Home Care Policy', pp. 158–64; Sax, _Ageing and Public Policy in Australia_ , p. 93.

38 _Age_ , 20 Dec. 1978 (Claude Forell, 'Our Age of Indifference').

39 ibid.

40 _SMH_ , 5 Jan. 1983, 29 May 1982, 3 Nov. 1984.

41 ibid.

42 Minichiello, pp. 149–68.

43 Newton, passim.

44 Carter, Jan, pp. 222–24.

45 Howe, 'How Long is Long Term Care?', pp. 149–54; Gibson, D. M. and Rowland, R T, pp. 997–1004.

46 Gibson, Diane, _Aged Care_ , p. 32.

47 Clare, de Bellis and Jarrett, pp. 22–29; _Australian_ , 8 Nov. 1982.

48 Gibson, Diane, _Aged Care_ , pp. 35–37, 48.

49 Kendig and McCallum, _Greying Australia_ , pp. ix–xi, 44–8, 51–3.

50 Borowski, Encel and Ozanne (eds), pp. 13–15.

## 11

## The Debate on 'The Problem' of Retirement for Men, 1950–1980

The prolonged debate about the perceived problems and challenges of retirement for men commenced in the 1950s in Australia and continues today. The context for this debate was set by the unprecedented demographic, economic, and medical advances of the last hundred years, which transformed experiences of ageing and fundamentally altered our assumptions about old age. The Australian demographic pattern in the nineteenth century differed markedly from that in Europe, due to the more youthful immigrant population and the high masculinity ratio. In the twentieth century the percentage of people over sixty-five increased from 4.3 per cent in 1911 to 9.8 per cent in 1981. These statistics seem unthreatening compared to those which fuel our current alarm about a 'demographic time-bomb', caused by rapid population ageing in the next thirty years. Indeed the panic of the 1950s and 1960s was particularly misplaced, because the rise in life expectancy from 1946 to the 1960s was more than compensated by the baby boom from about 1946–61, and by the very high immigration intake.1

Peter Laslett's discerning comment in 1991 on working men in England before 1950 also has resonance for Australia, including his emphasis on retirement from work as a gendered issue:

Until recently it was not only possible, but in some ways sensible, for people over most of the life course to ignore the possibility of living long after leaving active life and their work. This was particularly so for men. The chance of their surviving into the seventies and eighties was small enough to be regarded as unlikely—even as a piece of bad luck... Discounting becoming old was a widespread assumption up to and even into our own time. It may have been a standard feature of the outlook of all but the highly educated and the privileged... The working-class made little or no provision for the future out of their meagre resources.2

It seems just as likely that before the mid-twentieth century many poor working people in Australia—especially men—ignored or discounted the possibility of becoming old and enjoying a leisurely retirement. Up to the 1940s men were often in poor health and even disabled when they surrendered their jobs, and lacked the income to provide for such a future, especially if they did not own their homes. The Charity Organisation Society records in Victoria reveal that many working-class men worked until they dropped until the 1940s; some even sought employment into their sixties and seventies, if they survived that long. Indeed Sol Encel cited the remarkable contrast between the labour force participation rate for men aged 65–69 in 1911 at 72 per cent, and that of 8.4 per cent for all men over sixty-five in 1994.3

The _Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act_ of 1908 offered a meagre pension to limited numbers of very poor people and restricted it further by a tight means test and complex conditions. After 1908 federal government initiatives in social security for the aged were minimal for fifty years. The aged poor received little benefit from the Labor reforms of the 1940s, or from the economic growth of the next twenty years, as pensions remained too low at one-quarter of the basic wage. The means test restricted employment opportunities for many, and a minority (especially in Victoria) continued to see the pension as a charity rather than a right. There were other powerful forces operating to similar effect. Janet McCalman's interviews with older women in Richmond analysed in her excellent book, _Struggletown_ , suggest that poverty, war and economic depression could be more significant causes of demoralisation than meagre pensions and retirement per se.4 For most aged people there would be different combinations of disadvantage, depending on generation, gender, class, health and other variables.

The Hutchinson Report of 1954 in Victoria certainly noted marked ambivalence about retirement among numerous interviewees, especially men. The Report emphasised that even by 1954 the old-age pension was inadequate to support single people who had no extra income and did not own their own house. For some men, retirement from paid employment carried a loss of status and activity which implied marginalisation or rejection by the community and a sense of uselessness. Most interviewees admired those who could preserve their interests and vitality in old age, but had no personal expectation of their good health in old age permitting such activities. Few had considered the matter in depth before retirement, if at all.5 Pat Thane portrayed the experience of working-class men in England in the 1950s and 1960s as a gradual transition, as they aged, from full-time to part-time and casual work: 'a retirement that was often reluctant and impoverished, caused by physical decrepitude and often followed closely by death'.6 This description applied also in Australia.

### The Campaign to Raise the Male Retirement Age from the 1950s

The public debate in Australia from the 1950s about raising the male retirement age above sixty-five reinforced a widespread perception that labour in the paid workforce was the only valued activity; the elderly provided a useful reservoir of labour at times of full employment. This sustained effort to persuade older men to continue working for longer in a strong economy claimed it would save them from boredom and inertia. The argument that it was in older men's best interests to work for longer was hypocritical, since the needs of the labour market were paramount: the state of the economy determined the demand for the labour of men above retirement age. In periods of economic depression and high unemployment, jobs were so scarce that older workers were generally unwanted.

After 1945 there were more than twenty years of economic boom, with full employment and accelerated industrialisation, when older men were strongly encouraged to continue working. A Social Survey of Metropolitan Sydney in 1965 highlighted the supposedly enormous untapped pool of labour among older men and suggested increasing the formal age of retirement. The survey argued that men were still relatively healthy at sixty-five, with many useful skills. Compulsory retirement was deemed wasteful and cruel: 'the period of retirement is looked upon by many as the vacuum between work and death.'7 That common rhetoric was turned on its head after 1970.

As with the debate on the poverty of the elderly, Victoria led the rest of Australia on the male retirement issue. From the early 1950s the Victorian economy commenced a prolonged boom, after thirty-five years of the restrictions of war and depression. Yet the 1954 Hutchinson Report concluded that the elderly were not yet seen as an integral part of the mainstream economic culture. Only 12 per cent of those over sixty-five were employed, mostly men, and they generally took work out of economic necessity rather than preference—to supplement a very inadequate pension. Such men often lived in the poorest areas of Melbourne, where up to 50 per cent of older men needed to work for longer, making the retirement system wasteful, costly and demoralising. The Hutchinson Report strongly recommended a substantial increase in the 'totally inadequate' full pension rate of £3/7/6—only 25 per cent of the basic Victorian wage, which was especially hard on those living alone in rented accommodation. Moreover, the Hutchinson Report proposed dropping the means test for the aged pension, as it was unjust on poor people who needed to supplement low incomes by working. Old age, retirement and poverty were inextricably linked. Hutchinson concluded that 'retirement and the feeling of uselessness that follows it, is one of the most corrosive influences which bears upon old age, especially for men'. However, the Hutchinson Report added that some men would still prefer to retire earlier and that the types of work suitable for older men required investigation.8

The Hutchinson Report in 1954 reflected the well-informed debate on 'early retirement' for men in the Melbourne press from 1950. Several articles in the _Argus_ in 1950 deplored 'the bleak Indian Summer' endured by countless retired men over sixty-five: they were seeking re-employment because the rising cost of living was intolerable for those on tiny pensions. Thousands of older men would be willing to return to the labour market if the means test on the pension was eased or lifted, but would not risk losing the security of their pension otherwise. The _Argus_ argued that the means test raised a premium on idleness, leaving no incentive to work when earnings were deducted from the pension after a paltry minimum: boredom was a common male complaint, leaving too many lives 'purposeless, unwanted and forlorn'. Such discouragement of 'this great reservoir of manpower' was 'fantastically wasteful' at a time of increasing labour shortage. Concern for the welfare of these 'unhappy rusting people' competed with anxiety about the economy in the rhetoric of the _Argus_.9

British influence on this debate was again strong in two respects. In 1951 the Nuffield Foundation argued that loss of speed and vigour in older people was more than compensated by gains in experience, quality, accuracy and reliability, provided there was no time stress. Indeed psychologists had shown that established skills could be maintained to a considerable age, while improvements in medicine and health were increasing the fitness of older workers. By 1955 one of Melbourne's largest firms, Electronic Industries, was willing to retain men past sixty-five if they were pronounced medically fit, since their disabilities were offset by their technical knowledge.10

Another incentive to increase the male retirement age which was derived from Britain was the growing anxiety about 'the burden of dependency' across the generations. The rise in life expectancy raised acute alarm that younger people would be unable to support an ever-growing proportion of dependent older people. As we have seen, this anxiety in the 1950s was misplaced in Australia. The rise in life expectancy from 1946 to the 1960s was more than compensated by the baby boom from 1946 to 1961 and by a particularly high immigration intake. However, it was mistakenly argued in the leading newspapers that by 1960, younger working Australians would be carrying an increasingly weighty burden to support the fast growing numbers of the elderly. The rhetoric in the 1950s was contradictory, sometimes depicting the elderly as 'a social burden' and 'a class of the helpless', but more often as 'a valuable reservoir of manpower'. It was claimed that rigid age limits on retirement would cause waste in industry, hardship for older people, and increase the burden on the young.11

This debate about raising the male retirement age did not reach New South Wales until about five years later than Victoria. In the mid-1950s the Hauser Social Survey _Report of the Living Conditions of the Aged in the Sydney Metropolitan Area_ recommended that age barriers to employment should be raised to encourage physically fit older people to contribute to the economy rather than 'drain the public purse'. Since retirement was commonly perceived as 'the vacuum between work and death' and chronological age was no longer an accurate guide to abilities, age barriers to employment should be removed.12

Much of the pressure in this debate in Australia in the mid-1950s came from Britain and the United States, where the 'burden of dependency' was substantially greater than that in Australia, though this was not initially appreciated here. But on 8 February 1955, the _Sydney Morning Herald_ at last conceded that Britain's 'burden of dependency' far exceeded that in Australia, since Britain's demographic 'time-bomb' was infinitely more formidable. Yet some people still favoured raising the compulsory retirement age above sixty-five for men, except in some sections of the Commonwealth and state public service. However, even amongst supporters there were now two significant qualifications. First, the higher retirement age should operate only during full employment, essentially admitting that the issue entirely concerned the national economy, not the retirement interests of the elderly. The second qualification was that safeguards for younger men's promotion must be inserted, justified by the argument that most older men would not wish to continue working.13

Early in 1955, the _Sydney Morning Herald_ shifted further against increasing the male retirement age limit in the next few months. It admitted at last that discrimination against older applicants for jobs was rife and would be tough to change, with half of current job advertisements seeking men under forty or fifty. Certainly with the present acute labour shortage most older men could find work of some kind; but if labour demand eased, older men would again experience problems, as in the temporary 1952 recession. Moreover the NSW Public Service Board had now decided the 65-year-age limit must be retained so as not to discourage able younger men.14

In February 1956 the Commonwealth Cabinet belatedly established an interdepartmental committee to consider the effects of raising the compulsory retirement age on the employment of older people. In particular it examined the implications of the alleged sharp increase in anticipated costs of pensions and welfare due to population ageing. It took the federal committee of experts a remarkable eighteen months to conclude there was no case in the public service or private industry for increasing the male retirement age. The discussion was conducted with 'extraordinary secrecy'. The case in favour had been too strongly predicated on the 'alleged burden of dependency' in Britain and the United States, which was at last understood to be infinitely greater than in Australia. Indeed the population challenges in Australia had been 'grossly exaggerated', and the problems in extending the male retirement age not appreciated. It was argued without empirical justification that fit older men had no difficulty finding suitable lighter or part-time jobs.15

A few notes of opposition were raised in letters to the _Sydney Morning Herald_ 's editor in 1956. 'Too old at 70' objected that he was an active pensioner who had applied for scores of jobs, but was always told he was too old, or such prejudice was hinted at. Mr Robert Askin, subsequently Liberal Premier of NSW, protested in the Legislative Assembly that Australia was still an under-populated country which could not afford to throw people on the scrapheap at sixty-five. Dr Andre Ballard, a geriatric psychiatrist, observed that a compulsory retirement age deprived the community of great talent: each individual should be evaluated on merit and experience, not calendar age. Dr Ballard considered the attitudes displayed in this debate patronising and hostile to older people.16 His criticisms were well justified, especially as older women were simply treated as men's dependents and almost entirely ignored. Moreover, in the course of an extensive debate on the raising of the male retirement age, nothing was said about the individual advantages and value of retirement for the elderly, except for the possibility of continued employment in the interests of the economy.

### The Recession of the 1970s and Earlier Retirement from Employment

The fear of a retirement crisis had been generated by two forces. The concern that a 'demographic time bomb' would create a massive burden of dependency of the elderly on the young had, by 1957, been shown to be vastly exaggerated in Australia. Moreover, the perceived need to increase the numbers of older male workers during an extended booming economy in the 1950s and 1960s was terminated by the recession of the 1970s. During post-war reconstruction and labour shortage, the reliability and experience of older men was emphasised; but in economic downturn and high unemployment older workers were made redundant on the alleged grounds of physical weakness and lower productive capacity. Older workers were effectively a reserve of labour to be used when the needs of the economy demanded.

The years of prosperity and affluence in post-war Australia ended in the 1970s. Full employment had combined with rapid economic growth to cause spiralling inflation and a slowing rate of growth. An international recession following the 1973 oil crisis caused high levels of unemployment, which again affected older men who still needed to work. The 1975 Henderson Report, _Poverty in Australia_ , revealed that even in prosperous Melbourne, poverty was widespread among the elderly. One-third of the lowest income families identified by Henderson were single and widowed older people on meagre pensions.17

But the increasing pressure for early male retirement during economic depression provoked some objections to the perceived prejudice against older men. A leader article in the _Age_ in October 1973 observed:

There is a stirring, the signs of a revolution in this silent minority, a rejection of the stereotypes of old people as doddering dears, objects of pity, recipients of charity and non-producers... They are not a different race. They are us in a few years time.

The _Age_ attributed this stereotyping of the elderly to the institution of retirement, which forced older men out of the workforce, away from their peer group and their sense of occupational work. They had crossed an arbitrary dividing line, which required serious personal and financial adjustment. 'A work-orientated society sees them as no longer useful.' Moreover, it was often wrongly assumed that many older people over sixty-five were in nursing homes or hospitals, whereas over 90 per cent lived normally in their own homes. The _Age_ claimed support for its position from psychologists, social workers and the Victorian Council on the Ageing.18

From about 1970 the retirement debate became better informed as scholars began to analyse its economic, demographic, political and gerontological perspectives. H.M. Pollard, a professor of economic statistics at Macquarie University, observed in 1970 that between 1900 and 1960 expectation of life at birth had risen from fifty-five to sixty-eight years for men, and from fifty-nine to over seventy-four for women. The greater relative improvement in female mortality contributed to the considerable excess in numbers of women over sixty-five, though few women remained in the workforce beyond that age. Moreover, from 1954 to 1961 the proportion of men in employment fell rapidly with age, from about 50 per cent at sixty-five to 30 per cent at sixty-nine. Whereas in 1954 one man in three over sixty-five was working, this fell to less than one in four by about 1969. Moreover, those men over sixty-five not in the work force were either unable or unwilling to work, with only about 5 per cent interested in accepting suitable employment.19

Looking back from the 1980s, Russell Lansbury, then a lecturer at Monash University, reinforced Pollard's insights into the longer-term trend towards earlier retirement for men. From 1954 to 1976 the total aged population almost doubled to 1.2 million, yet the participation rate in the labour force of those over sixty-five fell from 17.6 per cent to 8.1 per cent. Lansbury found a clear new trend for men to retire between sixty and sixty-five over the previous decade, their participation rate falling from 80 per cent in 1967 to 63 per cent in 1977. Retiring earlier was increasingly common once the economic boom ended in 1970, even more so for those over sixty-five. Long-term unemployment from the early 1970s forced many into early retirement and, once retrenched, it was difficult to find another job. This trend to earlier retirement was strongest among the upper-middle-income groups, whereas unskilled working-class men more often needed to retain jobs to survive.20

The plight of older workers in the unemployment of the 1970s and 1980s was illustrated by the experience of Selwyn Dempster, married with two children and two grandchildren. Over the years he had many clerical jobs in Sydney and Alice Springs, including ten years as a sales manager, until ill-health in his later fifties forced him 'onto social Services'. He travelled through three states 'looking for jobs, even fruit picking, but because of my age which is sixty, the prospects were hopeless'. In desperation Dempster and his wife tried and failed to establish a ceramics business in Killarney in Queensland. Dempster's experiences of social security and job hunting were decidedly negative. He felt strongly that men should be entitled to a pension at sixty like women, thereby also releasing jobs for younger people: 'The older person, he's been employed all his life and he has Buckley's chance of ever getting a job again if he gives his last position away.' He had looked for work continuously over many months, only to be told: 'No, you're too old.' He felt extremely resentful, especially at being treated by social security staff as if he were a newly released prisoner. He continually had to prove to social security that he was actively looking for work, which was not easy in small towns. Men made redundant in their late fifties or early sixties had nothing but the dole, including Commonwealth Employment Services jobs digging ditches, which he could not manage at his age. He was certain he would have coped far more effectively with early retirement on the pension at sixty: he had many hobbies, including pistol shooting, gliding and teaching ceramics.21

### Gerontology in Australia

The discipline of gerontology, which studies all aspects of ageing, began slowly to have some influence in Australia from the 1950s. Its two early theoretical models of ageing reflected society's contradictory attitudes towards the contribution of older men to the economy. The 'activity theory' encouraged a search for productive and interesting roles to maintain wellbeing: this had some relevance for men in the labour market in the 1950s and 1960s. The 'disengagement theory' had more application in the 1970s: it saw retirement as a time when people lacked a meaningful role in the absence of paid work, living a supposedly bored and useless existence until death. The influence of each of these two contradictory theories can be seen at various times during the debates about changing the retirement age.22

In March 1963 the gerontological 'activity theory' was reflected in an address by Dr Sidney Sax, foundation president of the newly created Australian Association of Gerontology. As Director of Health Services in New South Wales, Sax was influential in encouraging the interests of geriatric medicine, as we have seen. His public lecture on 'Education for retirement' was sponsored by the recently established Old People's Welfare Council. Sax observed that retirement was an 'altogether new social phenomenon which ought to be a luxury', especially as it had been denied to most people in the past. Instead there was 'general cultural rejection of old age' and retirement, due to fear that economic distress and poor health were inevitable accompaniments; this was reinforced by the common view that gainful employment was the sole measure of human worth. Sax argued that retirement counselling organised by the Old People's Welfare Council could show men how to enjoy retirement: it could become a time of creative experience and encourage the development of positive roles in society outside the full-time workforce.23

Six months later the _Medical Journal of Australia_ applauded Sax's contribution, endorsing his call for the community to provide positive roles for elderly people. Indeed, 'happiness for the elderly is a society obligation' for which most people, young and old, were unprepared. Substantial early planning for retirement was indeed vital, to show men how to deal with reduced income, as well as loss of status and a daily work routine. People must learn how to enjoy and make good use of constructive and creative leisure-time activities, to be active rather than passive.24

These enthusiastic suggestions reflected not only the influence of gerontology's activity theory, but also the more educated middle-class perspective of their authors and audiences. This was also true of the lecture on preparation for retirement given by the eminent Dr H.C. Coombs in 1963, for the Old People's Welfare Council of Victoria. Coombs was Governor of the Reserve Bank and Pro-Chancellor of the Australian National University. He echoed Sax's argument that people in 1963 harboured a collection of fears about retirement as a series of losses—of income, status, sense of purpose and good health. He accepted that the pattern of life in older age must be changed to deal with reduced income and this involved simplifying one's life well before retirement. Loss of a sense of purpose created a serious danger of boredom, so satisfying new activities were essential to offer a good balance in retired life between physical, mental and emotional engagement. Frequent activity was vital in all areas to keep 'capacity alive'; learning a new language or skill such as painting could be exhilarating. Friendship and love of others were 'the richest source of emotional wealth'. Above all, balance was needed between activity and contemplation, with a regular set of activities to guard against loneliness.25 Coombs, like Sax, was a keen exponent of gerontology's activity theory, which had more direct application in the 1960s to men of the middle classes.

### 'Retirement—A Problem?' in the 1970s

In February 1972 the New South Wales Council on the Ageing sponsored several lectures by retired senior citizens on their own experiences, under the title 'Retirement—A Problem?' They provide valuable case studies of life as a 'retired' person in the 1970s. Harold Fraser, former chief industrial officer of the state transport department, admitted he could not subsist on his maximum pension of $30 per week. He took a seven-month holiday abroad on retirement, funded by compensation payments from a car accident. After analysing his situation, Harold decided that continued employment was financially necessary, while he coped emotionally with retirement by not retiring. He advertised for work, which kept him feeling alive and capable while earning necessary income. He also gained satisfaction from undertaking social work on a voluntary basis, and urged others to contribute to society as volunteers.26

Harold Parle retired from the Commonwealth Public Service in 1957 at sixty-five, after fifty years service. He was fortunate to have good superannuation but afraid that boredom would cause his mental and physical health to deteriorate. Harold acknowledged that he was fortunate to have the financial security which many pensioners lacked, especially those who faced a bleak outlook because they did not own their homes. He advised people to make adequate provision for retirement during their working life. When he retired in 1957 most colleagues said they planned only to potter, read and play bowls, but many subsequently complained of boredom, often accentuated by mental and physical deterioration. Harold Parle recommended thoughtful planning for retirement, focused on interesting hobbies or voluntary social work. Apart from maintaining his home and garden, Parle translated hundreds of books into braille for about three hours each day for fourteen years. He also gained satisfaction from further education.27

Harold Parle assumed the common male view that retirement was easy for women since they never really retired from work as housewife, mother and carer for ageing relatives: they were essentially men's dependents. But Mrs Elsa C. Maher, aged eighty in 1972, was highly unusual in contributing a lecture offering a woman's perspective on the experience of retirement, and even more so in making enterprising retirement plans in her fifties. Drawing on her interest in art and crafts, she took a three-year course at the local technical college which enabled her to develop a small business making hats. She also joined a horticultural society, while her hobbies included floral art, making jewellery and extensive travel. At eighty she was happy and full of life, especially when she won prizes for her floral displays.28

Professor R.J. Lawrence, an academic in social work at the University of NSW, saw retirement in 1970 as a major issue in western industrial countries because of its near universal impact: 'the permanent withdrawal of masses of people from the work role, and at an age well before their death, presents our affluent society with one of its emerging social issues.' Yet despite its obvious importance, retirement had not yet become 'a full-blown social issue' in Australia because the demographic pressure of an ageing population was a generation behind other developed countries. As yet there was little community debate and few governmental guidelines to cope with large-scale retirement. She raised questions but offered few answers, and unfortunately failed to breach the general silence on women's distinctive experience of retirement.29

Hazel Halse of the Victorian Department of Health made a more constructive contribution to the debate on retirement in 1976 in the _Medical Journal of Australia_ , though yet again the focus was restricted to men. She agreed that many men saw employment as the pivot of their existence—it bestowed status, possible success and a livelihood, so that retirement could be traumatic. Retirement advice could assist in preparation, but much depended on the individual retiree's personality, education and motivation. Those with well-integrated personalities would cope more effectively with changes in lifestyle, relying on inner resources and experienced coping mechanisms. Dependent, passive people might sink into apathy and the totally disorganised would survive on the services of others, perhaps becoming institutionalised. Though some people become disengaged around retirement age, in most this happened much later, if at all.30

### New Approaches to 'Greying Australia' in the 1980s

The early 1980s represented a watershed in the history of the elderly in Australia—they were no longer 'the hidden people'. The demographic transition in Australia was near completion, with massive reductions in both mortality and birth rates, transforming the age structure of the population. Australia's experience of rapid population growth was later and slower than other developed countries, such as Europe and Japan. But Australia had now reached demographic maturity, and was experiencing rapid population ageing. Those over sixty were likely to increase from two million in 1981, three million in 2001 and five million in 2021, accelerating with the impact of the 'baby boom' generation. Moreover, as Kendig and McCallum observe, the 'dependency burden' of older people relative to younger workers would rise even more rapidly from 2001. The numbers would almost double among those over seventy-five, and women would continue to outnumber men by nearly two to one, once they reached eighty.31

While the fears of population ageing had been in evidence in Australia since the 1950s, they were vastly overstated in the earlier decades, failing to take into account the baby boomers and high immigration. From the 1980s they became more realistic and focused the minds of many on the coming ageing crisis. This recognition generated a flood of books, articles and government reports on 'greying Australia', starting in 1980, including the first issue of a significant new journal, the _Australian Journal on Ageing_ in 1982. Scholars from many disciplines in the social sciences—except history—turned their minds to this crucial new issue. They included an enterprising and influential group in the 'Ageing and the Family Project' at the Australian National University, led by Hal Kendig, John McCallum, Diane Gibson, Don Rowland, and others.

The title of the new _Australian Journal on Ageing_ was indicative of new Australian approaches, as it avoided the term 'gerontology'. Perhaps this reflected the recently expressed doubt in the international journal, _The Gerontologist_ , as to whether gerontology really existed as a discipline in its own right: 'gerontology still seems to lack agreement on methods, theories, or a common body of basic knowledge.'32 This uncertainty was reflected in John McCallum's essay on retirement in the first issue of the new _Australian Journal on Ageing_ in 1982, as he examined gerontology's conflicting theories on retirement. The so-called 'disengagement theory', developed in America in the late fifties, depicted ageing as inevitable withdrawal from the social system on retirement, a loss of prime life activity and commitment. McCallum rejected this theory as 'theoretically suspect and empirically unsupported'. But 'activity theory' was little better as it conceived retirement as an unstructured life of boredom, insecurity and social rejection, unless retirees took deliberate measures to stay active and find substitute roles. Both theories portrayed the elderly as an economically and socially deprived group who lacked agency—indeed, as a problem for society. McCallum sounded the rallying cry for new groups of scholars working on ageing: old age must be researched as a normal stage of life for all of us.33 Indeed all aspects of ageing required investigation since so little theoretical or empirical work had been carried out so far in Australia.

In subsequent publications, John McCallum and Hal Kendig looked more closely at the changing experience of retirement in Australia. They argued that the trend to earlier retirement with the decline in male participation in the labour force had some positive effects, reinforced by recent improvements in government pensions. In 1984 about one in ten men over sixty-five were in the workforce, compared with one in three in 1947. Australian social surveys had already shown that 'a relatively active and independent retirement is an accepted life-phase for Australians'. Most older Australian males now had no difficulty adapting to retirement and were increasingly displaying a preference for 'late life leisure' over work. However, more leisure time caused some frustration due to minimal pension levels and few attractive opportunities so far, except for post-retirement educational options.34 Even the University of the Third Age (U3A), aimed at retired people, started in Australia twenty years later than in Britain. The first attempt to initiate U3A in Sydney in 1978 foundered because retired academics saw little call for it, but by the early 1990s a U3A consortium from Sydney and Monash universities attracted about a thousand members.35

In 1986 Kendig and McCallum observed in _Greying Australia_ that different generational age cohorts brought varying values and activity preferences to old age, formed from experiences in different periods of history. Variables of social class, education, region, health and gender also continued to influence the way people aged in retirement. Social surveys revealed that two-thirds of newly retired people adjusted easily to the change, though some were hindered by limitations of health, low income, and lack of home ownership. Around half of retirees were involved in voluntary community work or clubs and church groups in 1986, though this activity declined as people aged. Clearly leisure facilities, educational programs, and part-time employment opportunities needed to be vastly improved to meet growing demands. But in general most people adjusted without difficulty to retired living.36

Ken Dempsey, a sociologist at La Trobe University, wrote in 1983 about retirement in the small country town in north-west Victoria he called 'Smalltown'. He dismissed the 'crisis theory of retirement' for men, supposedly suddenly deprived of financial rewards, job and status satisfaction, and comradeship. Retirement could be traumatic in its lack of a socially recognisable role in the 1950s and 1960s, but by the late 1970s and 1980s retirement was often viewed more positively. Dempsey interviewed fifty-six 'non-institutionalized male retirees' in a small country town in a mixed farming district with a population of just over 4000. Smalltown suffered economic stagnation and population decline, but its retirees enjoyed cheap housing, numerous local facilities and companionship of friends and family: the retiree 'truly belongs'. Their average age was seventy-three and, though half were in good health, nearly 40 per cent had chronic health problems. Only half of them missed their farming jobs and most still saw farming workmates. Those in good health usually found interesting and useful ways to spend time, including gardening, sport and jobs around the home. Only about 10 per cent had a deeply unhappy experience with retirement, though these men often had serious problems with health, alcoholism or unsatisfactory personal relationships. More than 80 per cent had close relatives nearby.37

Looking back from 1997, distinguished social scientist Sol Encel confirmed that, since the early 1970s, chronic unemployment had hit men hard because it had been disproportionately focused on older men who were obliged to retire prematurely. The labour force participation rate of 72 per cent for men aged 65–69 in 1911 had shrunk to an astonishing 8.4 per cent for all men over sixty-five in 1994. The International Labour Organization warned that the marginalisation of older workers would carry longer-term social costs in terms of inactive and less healthy older people. The Henderson Report in 1975–6 had recommended the abolition of compulsory retirement to address the problem of age discrimination. By 1996 most states had acted accordingly, but legislation was not enough to challenge long-held assumptions about fixed retirement ages. Instead older men were encouraged to undertake more volunteer work in welfare and community services; above all to stay active and involved, including gainful employment where possible to maintain health and well-being.38

The Commonwealth Treasury's 2010 Intergenerational Report (IGR), _Australia to 2050_ , predicted that the proportion of Australians aged 65–84 would increase from 11.7 per cent to 17.6 per cent by 2050. Moreover, the 2010 IGR revealed a recent rise in labour force participation by older workers. This increase was most obvious in the 55–64 age group but more people aged sixty-five and over were remaining in work. The proportion of workers aged fifty-five and above was projected to rise by nearly 50 per cent between 2007 and 2047.39 International research revealed little difference between the productivity of older and younger workers. Older workers offered loyalty, less absenteeism and continuity of employment, while their skills and experience were an advantage. Australia had encouraged the employment of older workers as the economy expanded and the proportion of older people increased.40

There is still a need to reduce prejudice against older people, especially when they seek to work after the age of sixty-five. The number of people with retirement problems may increase without an adequate social or economic framework of support. During two world wars and economic depression elderly people were low on governments' agendas. In the twenty years of economic prosperity from 1950, older men were valued as a useful workforce in a booming economy, until the situation was again reversed from the 1970s. This debate about the appropriate retirement age for men indirectly opened up the issue of prejudice against older workers. There was little mention of women, still regarded as helpmates to their husbands. Only after 1980 did the issue of 'ageism' become a major subject for analysis by social scientists, notably in the new _Australian Journal on Ageing_. However, the demographic challenges are infinitely greater in the decades ahead.

### Notes

1 Rowland, _Ageing in Australia_ , pp. 17 (fig. 2.1), 15–8.

2 Laslett, pp. 87–8.

3 Encel, pp. 137–56.

4 McCalman, ch. 10.

5 Hutchinson, pp. 33–4, 65–72.

6 Thane, _Old Age in English History_ , p. 387.

7 [Hauser], _Report of The Living Conditions of the Aged in the Sydney Metropolitan Area_ [hereafter _Sydney Metropolitan Area_ ].

8 Hutchinson, pp. 64–74, 143–5.

9 _Argus_ , 2 Sept. 1950; 5, 8 March, 8 Aug. 1951.

10 _Herald_ (Melbourne), 3 June 1952, 2 May 1955.

11 _Argus_ , 6 Feb. 1952; _Herald_ (Melbourne), 3 June 1952, 18 Aug. 1954.

12 [Hauser], _Sydney Metropolitan Area_.

13 _SMH_ , 8 Feb. 1955.

14 ibid., 10 Feb., 23, 25 March, 26 July 1955.

15 ibid., 6, 18, 11 Feb. 1956; 19 July 1957.

16 ibid., 17 Feb. 1956; 8 March, 17 July 1957.

17 See e.g. Henderson, _Poverty in Australia_ , ch. 14.

18 _Age_ , 29 Oct. 1973.

19 Pollard, pp. 36–7, 44–8.

20 Lansbury, pp. 237–9.

21 Dempster, Selwyn, interview.

22 Blaikie, pp. 60–1.

23 Sax, _Education for Retirement_ , 21 March 1963.

24 _MJA_ , 5 Oct. 1963.

25 Coombs, 1963.

26 NSW Council on the Ageing, 'Talks by Retired Senior Citizens', Feb. 1972, MS 2929/11, K48899, ML.

27 ibid.

28 ibid.

29 Lawrence, R. J., pp. 125–37.

30 Halse, pp. 118–9.

31 Kendig and McCallum, _Greying Australia_ , pp. ix, 3–10.

32 _Gerontologist_ , vol. 21, no. 1, 1981.

33 McCallum, 'Perspectives on the Transition from Work to Retirement', pp. 27–35.

34 McCallum, 'Lifestyle Implications of Australian Retirement Patterns', pp. 9–13; Kendig and McCallum, _Greying Australia_ , pp. x–xi.

35 _U3A Sydney Newsletter_ , vol. 5, April 1992.

36 Kendig and McCallum, _Greying Australia_ , pp. 39–43.

37 Dempsey, pp. 4–8.

38 Encel, pp. 137–56.

39 Intergenerational Report 2010.

40 _Australian_ , 31 Jan., 1 Feb. 2012; Beard and Biggs et als., passim (esp. Simon Biggs).

## 12

## Edna Ryan's Journal of Old Age, 1972–1994: Retirement Villages or Independent Living?

This final chapter explores Edna Ryan's experience of old age from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, with an emphasis on her challenges and coping mechanisms over the age of eighty. This focus on an elderly woman is particularly valuable since women were absent from the lengthy national debate on retirement. In 1968 the American geriatrician Robert Butler coined the term 'ageism' as 'a process of systematic stereotyping or discrimination against people because they are old'—categorising them as senile, unproductive and frail. In 1991 the British demographer Peter Laslett described those over eighty as 'the fourth age'; he was concerned that too many people between sixty-five and eighty may be stereotyped in terms that more accurately fitted those over eighty, likely to be the least active.1 The demographer Don Rowland argues that prejudice against the very old may again increase, as younger generations fear the impact on resources of rising numbers of frail and dependent people over seventy-five. Rowland notes that the numbers of women who reached seventy in 1986 had more than doubled since 1881, with 81 per cent reaching seventy in 1986. Life expectancy at birth had improved by about twenty-seven years in that century, reaching seventy-nine for women and seventy-three for men, with the increase for women explaining much of the extended ageing of those over seventy-five.2

Elena Job's 1984 book, _Eighty Plus: Outgrowing the Myths of Old Age_ , was based on her regional survey of people over eighty in the Brisbane suburb of Toowong, largely middle class, with 75 per cent Australian born. Women made up 83 per cent of the 340 people interviewed, and mostly lived independently alone in the community, often with family support. Retirement had posed few problems for 75 per cent of the men, despite a sharp drop in income, but women were far more financially vulnerable due to lower incomes, longer life expectancy and little superannuation. Women and men generally found satisfying substitutes for paid work in family life, friendships, hobbies, voluntary work and religious activities. Nearly two-thirds of these over-eighties claimed their health was either 'very good' or good for their age. However, chronic illnesses increased for those over eighty-five, including cardiovascular disease and arthritis, though old age over eighty was not in itself synonymous with disease. In extreme old age women were more likely to lose social contacts, useful roles and mental stimulus, though relatively few declined into 'senile frailty'.3

* * *

Edna Ryan (1904–1997) belonged to an unfortunate generation severely affected by world wars, economic depression, poverty, and high unemployment. Edna was born with the right to vote and, from 1908, the right to a pension if eligible. Most of her female cohort left the workforce on marriage, so their limited years of paid work generated little superannuation. At the age of sixty-five in 1970, 50 per cent of Edna Ryan's cohort were married, 36 per cent widowed, 4 per cent divorced or separated and 10 per cent unmarried. Since 50 per cent had no husband when they reached age sixty-five, they were dependent on a small old-age pension and vulnerable to institutionalisation once they became frail.4 Edna's generation enjoyed more opportunities in old age than the previous generation, including retirement villages, better pensions and higher expectations. Edna herself recognised the substantial generational differences among the various cohorts of women as well as the continuing gender gap: 'We sure are a long way from equality of the sexes. Senior women of this generation gained very little—it's all come for the younger ones. Women who have not been earning all their lives have a lot to catch up.'5

However, as Edna Ryan observed: 'Individuals differ so greatly in their physical ills and ailments, their living conditions, their heredity, that few people would have exactly the same experiences as I.'6 Indeed Edna was unusual in her ideological and class commitments, and her courage, determination and remarkable gifts. Her story of old age as told in her journal is invaluable because she was an excellent writer who was unusually perceptive and reflective about her experiences and challenges in ageing, which she placed within a broad social context. There are few such revealing records of ageing for women; these are all the more precious in view of the prolonged national focus on male retirement. Women's experiences of older age were generally overlooked because they were largely stereotyped as dependents of male wage earners: the gendered division of labour remained powerful. It is no accident that Edna was both widowed and living alone, supported by the basic pension.

It is also no coincidence that the terms 'Fourth Age', 'Old-old' and '80+' were new concepts of the 1970s and 1980s, when it was at last becoming possible for women to think more creatively about living a good life in later years. We can mentally compare Edna Ryan's narrative of old age with those of the more fortunate men of her own generation, and also with those more unlucky women born between 1880 and 1910, and even Mary Gilmore, born in 1865. Edna Ryan was unusual in surviving beyond eighty, despite severe health problems, limited finances, and early widowhood. Financial concerns seriously affected her planning for an uncertain future but she was determined to live a useful and meaningful life. Her detailed daily journal gave greater meaning to her own old age, as well as illuminating for posterity the process and challenges of ageing from the early 1970s to 1994.

### Edna Ryan's Journal of Old Age

Edna Ryan was a much-loved feminist, trade unionist, political activist and labour historian who made a major contribution to the achievement of equal pay and maternity leave for women in Australia. She devoted her life to the cause of social justice for working women and their families, publishing two influential books, _Gentle Invaders: Australian Women at Work 1788–1974_ (with Anne Conlon) in 1975, and _Two Thirds of a Man: Women and Arbitration in NSW, 1902–1908_ in 1984, as well as numerous articles, conference papers and submissions to government.7 Edna was born in 1904 to a poor working-class family of twelve. Her mother brought her family up by cleaning offices, and her father was a committed socialist. Her socialism and feminism were powerfully influenced by the Great War, the Russian Revolution and the interwar depression. As a child Edna saw her elder sisters in the endless drudgery of low-paid women's work as tailoresses, which motivated her to improve conditions and pay for women. She left school early to work as a clerk, but continued her studies at evening class. She joined the Communist Party for five years in the 1920s, determined to change society, but left when her husband Jack Ryan was expelled.8

In 1935 the Ryans joined the Australian Labor Party and Edna was twice an unsuccessful candidate for a Senate seat. She was the family breadwinner for some time in her forties after Jack gave up his butcher's shop to take up poultry farming, but suffered an occlusion. Edna raised her three children, Julia, Lyndall and Patrick, alone after Jack's early death. She spent nine years as a Labor Party alderman for the local council and became a foundation member of the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL) in 1972, encouraged by her daughters. She participated in campaigns which led to the Arbitration Commission extending equal minimum wages to women. Edna had numerous good friends, including Beryl Henderson, who had worked in the abortion law reform movement in Britain. After joining WEL, Edna's life 'took off from there—It was so alive', and unexpected.9

Edna Ryan was highly unusual in her determination to keep a series of detailed notebooks describing her own experiences of old age, to provide 'hints for growing old' which might even make a book one day.10 She would note 'my status, my social place, feelings and attitudes', including the advantages of an independent life for women, with detailed suggestions on healthy living. Edna's aim to write a book on old age meant that she was far more reflective about her own experiences of advancing years than most diarists. 'I aim for a recorded account of daily life', including trials and tribulations, coping mechanisms, and daily experiences of health, activities and mental state.11 In later years, she occasionally provided 'a complete run-down on my health condition and my health practices', including eyes, skin, teeth and hearing. In the early years she aimed 'to pass on to others the benefit of my experience, success and failures', but as time passed this seemed an impossible task. When Edna was eighty-five she wondered who would benefit from her 'daily wail', given the vast variety of human experiences of ageing: 'I did commence the report on ageing to assist others but the longer I go on, the less value it seems to have to anyone else.' Edna knew she was seen as a model by younger women but few people realised the limitations, despair and the uncertainties of old age. 'The struggle to retain control over one's life is inevitably a losing battle if one is too frail.'12

The first major theme in Edna Ryan's notebooks in the early 1970s was that of retirement for women, who were almost entirely excluded from the national debate. Though she had helped to win equal pay for women, she was acutely conscious that this did not extend to equal superannuation: 'I had dreaded retirement and living on the pension but there is no escape—no superannuation for women like me who have worked and then stayed at home rearing children and then worked again.' Edna decided to retire from employment in 1972 at the age of sixty because she had started a new life as a committed feminist: 'I am first of all a feminist. Instead of coming to the end of my tether a new life had begun—suddenly, joyously, my age didn't matter.' She was keen to leave full-time paid work to enjoy the 'sunshine of living, of thinking, of reading', and working for the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL) with her daughters. But there was a snag. Like many women of her generation, she had earlier falsified her age by several years to improve her chances of finding work. That might now reduce her hope of obtaining part-time work and certainly precluded her from continued active participation in union work. She condemned the attitude of men and society to older women as 'devastating'.13

Despite her delight at retiring to work for WEL, Edna found her application for a government pension in 1973 traumatic: 'I haven't been on the doorstep of the State since the depression, when in order to survive we were technically dole frauds.' She was determined not to depend upon social services again. Edna's comments are a telling reminder of the lingering perception of the age pension as charity among a small segment of the working class. In the past seven months she had earned $2000, which she feared might preclude her from the pension. Edna declared her income to the Department of Social Security as requested, with her home unit valued at $13 270, and with $9000 in additional funds. To her surprise she was eligible for the pension of $20 per week, though she was not allowed to exceed an additional income above $10.25 per week in any period of eight weeks. Part-time paid work was definitely out of the question. Edna reassured her daughter Julia that she might manage adequately on the pension, though overheads such as phone, power, travel and clothes would have to come out of her own kitty: indeed, she joked that she was 'glad to be a parasite' on a pension.14

Within six months of her 'retirement trauma' Edna was happy in her 'central city home cum office', having equipped herself with an electric typewriter. She was content on her reduced income, 'doing my own thing', having maintained 'a slave psychology' for too long: 'I don't _think_ as an old person and forget that I look one... I'm quite happy to wallow in the women's movement and live frugally.' She was a late starter, finding her own wings as she analysed the experiences and challenges of older women. She was especially concerned that there were many more older women in society than men, yet they had fewer financial resources, little superannuation, and extra family caring responsibilities. Women's employment prospects had long been restricted by their caring role. Many women in their fifties and sixties had to give up paid work to look after parents: 'it suits men fine to have women relegated to the unpaid caring role which men are never expected to perform, but the women doing it are leading a half-life in many cases.'15

Edna Ryan was always conscious that her own experience of old age was painfully influenced by her own particular health issues. Her major problem was the serious deterioration of her hearing: in 1979 her ear specialist urged her to try a hearing aid and attend lip-reading classes, since an operation would not help. Two years later she noted that her loss of hearing made her feel very much of an outsider most of the time. She could not rely on people to be more patient. She was also feeling fatigue, mental and physical. Indeed 1981 marked a new phase in her life: 'I am no longer active in the cause of attending meetings, going on deputations, writing submissions.' However, two new hearing aids in 1982 'proved a great boon to me'. She wore them when giving an address to the National Women's Labour Conference, without any discomfort: 'I felt as though they belonged to me.' Otherwise her health was so good that she moved house, from a one-room Park Regis unit to a two-room unit in Glebe.16

### Edna Ryan in her Eighties: Retirement Villages versus Independent Living?

At the age of seventy-nine in 1985, following the death of her last remaining sister, Edna Ryan began to worry about her future prospects in extreme old age. Her exploration in the 1980s of the recently created retirement villages offers valuable insights. Though she was exceptionally well informed about retirement villages, even she was frustrated by her negotiations with the Anglican Retirement Villages at Castle Hill. As we saw earlier, the _Aged Persons Homes Act_ of 1954 had subsidised charitable organisations to build accommodation for independent, older people, but increasingly relied on capital donations from clients. As Hal Kendig commented in 1990: 'The private sector noted the success of these ventures and spawned a private-for-profit retirement home industry which has virtually exploded over the last decade.' Older home owners used capital from their home sales in the hope of gaining supportive services and congenial company in a retirement village.17

Many development companies joined the retirement village bonanza, some making substantial profits in the early 1980s, but others failing. About 6000 people lived in such villages in Sydney by 1986, two-thirds of them on the North Shore. The _Sydney Morning Herald_ explained that the boom was deliberately stimulated by the relaxation of state planning laws to permit larger buildings on land zoned as rural and residential. Warringah Shire Council had approved $93 million worth of applications to build nineteen such villages. By 1987 Baulkham Hills in the northern suburbs had nine retirement villages, including six owned by the Anglican Retirement Villages based at Castle Hill, to which Edna Ryan applied.18

Most such villages had long waiting lists and many were subject to numerous complaints, including unexpected cost increases, breaches of contract, bad managers, and disappointed hopes. By 1989 there was still no NSW legislation protecting consumers from the tougher conditions of some contracts. However, in 1987–8 the NSW Council on the Ageing and the NSW Department of Consumer Affairs introduced a code of practice aiming to regulate villages by assessing them for accreditation. Problems arose because so many different types of village were being developed, and some self-care villages offered few support services.19

Edna Ryan had first applied to the Castle Hill Village run by the Anglican Retirement Villages in 1981 and sought to keep that application for a home unit alive in case of future need. Though now eighty in 1985, she explained in her application that she was still leading 'an active and fulfilling life', with no wish as yet to leave her Glebe unit. But this situation might change in the future. If her strength diminished she would enjoy the prospect of joining friends in a home unit in the Castle Hill Village. The response from the Village noted only a considerable waiting list for hostel accommodation at Castle Hill, with no mention of the home units for the more able-bodied.20

Edna's eightieth birthday in 1985 gave her pause for thought. 'I am at the crossroads physically and mentally... I have to discuss whether I am stable, or on the way down.' She was experiencing 'emotional ups and downs' about her ability to carry on, especially as she was overwhelmed by weariness at a recent WEL meeting: 'Accommodating myself to ageing is time consuming.' However, an enjoyable cruise in Europe improved her health and state of mind.21 On return she found another letter from Castle Hill Village asking if she wished to come for interview for a hostel place (not a home unit) and warning that deferment might mean rejection. So Edna considered the relative merits of living alone in her Glebe unit or entering Castle Hill Village, and initially favoured the former. Living alone in Glebe allowed her to be indulgent, to write, rest and eat whenever she chose: 'My objective is to stay in my own place as long as possible: to the end if possible'... 'I feel quite threatened and wonder whether I should give up my flat. But I love my space, my bit of sky, and the bees and my little pot plants... If I got the village I shall hardly ever go to the cinema or theatre again.'22

But Edna was painfully aware that her responses to the two options fluctuated wildly with her state of mind and health. Only a week later on 4 November 1985, she advised Director Donald Coburn that she now wished to apply for an independent home unit at the Mowll Village at Castle Hill, rather than a room in their hostel for the less active. Mowll Village had beautiful but expensive home units costing up to $27 000, with an 'extortionate overhead levy' of $1248 p.a., which included nursing and medical care. Edna observed, 'the great thing is the service or hospitalisation in the event of illness. But one really pays for this. My enthusiasm is dampened'.23 Edna Ryan consulted her friend, Eva Cox, a women's advocate and social critic, who advised that Edna should stay in her Glebe unit, but take out a mortgage for travel needs, leaving a small debt on the property when she died. Edna was persuaded: 'My mind is made up just as solidly against the move as I had been in favour a week before.' If Edna became senile like her unfortunate sister, Victoria, she could go to Rozelle Psychiatric Centre, where her sister had been well cared for. If she became 'frail but not crazy', she would apply for nursing and housekeeper home-care services, with meals on wheels. So Edna cancelled her appointment with Castle Hill, advising that she might apply for the hostel eventually.24

In 1986 Edna continued to write and use her time fruitfully, but feared she had 'lost the spark'. She attended WEL meetings but was handicapped by her inability to hear all the other women said. She decided to focus chiefly on keeping up with current events, spending time with friends and continuing her notebook commentaries on her own experience of ageing. Yet her anxiety that she might become senile like her poor sister Victoria continued to worry her as the years passed. In October 1986 she embarked on another European cruise, from Athens to Jerusalem. But she was 'the only lone _old_ woman. Young men do not even see old women—cannot cope at all... We are at the mercy of our failing bodies and of the practices of an unsympathetic world'.25

On return Edna required a completely new set of top and bottom teeth: 'truly one gets fed up of all the details to be watched—teeth, eyes, nose and breathing.' Three or four dental visits were required to fix the bottom denture. 'But oh! The sight of me without any dentures! This happens to all the frail old if they become senile. Not a pretty ending to life.' By January 1987 Edna's hearing had deteriorated further, causing depression and anxiety, requiring cancellation of her beloved visits to the Sydney Theatre Company. In this despondent state Edna reconsidered Mowll Village at Castle Hill, which would solve the large problem 'of being immobilised and stranded—of needing care and attention'. She would be relatively isolated at Mowll and miss the active Glebe social scene where she had many friends and substantial community support, but would be able to write and walk in an attractive setting.26 So again she sent a formal application for a self-contained home unit, not a hostel room: 'I am aged 82, in very good health and still very active.'27

On 7 February 1987 Edna advised her daughter Julia and her son Pat of her decision to seek a two-room home unit in Mowll Village, having already convinced her daughter Lyndall. She did not wish to 'hang on for years a terrible burden', unable to cope for herself, and not knowing how or when she might deteriorate or become senile. Her family cautioned that Mowll was far too expensive, urging her instead to consider a cheaper retirement village at Strathfield. But she did not want to live in the 'desert' of suburbia again and preferred a good-sized flat in an attractive setting in the country. Most of all she wanted peace of mind by taking steps in good time before she became too frail and dependent. This decision was reinforced by the anxiety of continuing trouble with her hearing and teeth.28

Edna Ryan described her visit to Mowll Village early in March 1987, accompanied by her friend Bobby Burke, as 'a day to remember', treating it as 'a sort of picnic day'. Edna had been fully reconciled that morning to selling her Glebe flat to move to a home unit at Mowll. She was shocked to discover that the two female interviewers emphasised their adamant refusal to place anyone over eighty in a self-contained home unit. They suggested she stay in her Glebe unit until she could no longer do housework, when she could move into a cheaper hostel unit at Mowll. But Edna noted in her diary that if she had a stroke she might not be eligible. She must be fit and self-reliant to be eligible for a hostel room. Edna had reconciled herself to the move and it was a shock to learn she was too fit to enter.29

Bobby Burke and Edna celebrated this reprieve that evening with a bottle of Queen Adelaide champagne. It had been a strange and surprising day, but Edna was quickly reconciled to the turn of events. From a financial perspective it was wise to remain in her flat, and she could have 'five years of good living'. Edna had a new lease of life, seeing her own Glebe unit with new eyes and planning improvements. She also turned her attention to her financial situation. As owner of the Glebe unit she saved on rent, but it was impossible to survive on the pension alone without supplementary assistance from her children, as the pension had not kept pace with the cost of living. She tried to live within the bounds of government restrictions, keeping her weekly earnings below $30 per week, when the pension became taxable. If her children were unable to help, she would need to mortgage her flat to pay for dental and hearing services.30

Edna was also concerned that as her eighties advanced, her mood swings became more extreme. In the second half of 1987, 'the physical insecurity and uncertainty have disappeared and I have been in great form and spirits'. However, she feared she would relapse into despondency again in time. Her splendid health and 'excellent frame of mind' encouraged her to volunteer an article for _Australian Feminist Studies_. Edna was delighted she had now become a 'professional feminist... wined and dined and fussed over, and most of all, functioning and working'.31 Indeed, at the age of eighty-three Edna felt guilty when she was not working productively.

Edna's notebook entries which focussed on the process of ageing may in themselves give a misleading impression of her life, as her usual busy round of activity continued for many more years, including household chores and shopping, visits to art galleries and films. Her numerous notebooks contained careful drafts for talks and articles, and for the WEL newsletter, which were drawn from serious research in libraries. Edna walked to keep fit, and blessed her good fortune in having medication to control her blood pressure, which had been unavailable to previous generations, including Mary Gilmore's. Edna was fortunate to have lively, supportive and helpful friends. She also enjoyed a cruise on the P&O liner, 'Canberra', from Sydney to Southampton, visiting Japan, Egypt and Italy en route, at a cost of $6016 for six weeks.

### How to Cope with Encroaching Frailty: Independence, Family or Institutional Care?

However, when the pendulum again swung back and Edna was low in spirits she continued to worry about becoming frail or senile while living alone. In September 1987 she wrote to her daughter Julia, suggesting she might 'live in the pad at the back of you'. Edna observed she had no chronic complaints and was unlikely to be bedridden, though she might become mentally disturbed like her sister Victoria. She would not consider sharing a house with her children but could be entirely independent in the outside granny flat. 'I would not like you to feel threatened about my intruding on your social life,' as she wished to be left alone. Edna had determined that she could finance the move by selling her Glebe unit, investing the money and living on the interest. Julia seems to have replied very gently that it would be good to have her mother closer to her in Canberra, but unwise to share the house.32

During the three years from 1987 to 1990, Edna became more anxious about raised blood pressure and potential heart problems but was generally reassured by medical specialists. As she noted in August 1988, 'I have an ache around the heart and can never tell whether this is a heart condition or the old cracked rib'. But she was reassured her condition was 'in keeping with my age so far as the arteries are concerned', with no cause for alarm. Indeed by 1989 her blood pressure reading at 130/80 was 'regarded as wonderful', with some thanks to yoga and relaxation therapy. Even her hearing improved in March 1989 after her visit to the new Commonwealth Acoustic Laboratory. She had an auditory test of wider scope than before, and was advised that her old hearing aids were almost useless. The new hearing aid was such an improvement, she could now use the telephone.33

Edna occasionally awoke with a 'great longing, loneliness, discontent', which made her anxious that she had been too 'self-assured about adjusting to ageing—too cocky'. She had a deep yearning for regular company on an everyday basis, without actually sharing a house. In 1989 she seemed to be reasonably well but lacking in confidence: 'Looking after myself generally seems to take up most of the time.' Though her health was relatively good for her age, her energy levels were declining, and she wasn't sure that she could cope much longer with the household chores. So Edna applied for assistance from the government home-help service, believing she had an entitlement at age eighty-five. But when the home-care service sent an interviewer in March 1989, Edna was told she was 'neither ill enough nor poverty stricken enough' to receive assistance. The interviewer claimed it was necessary to guard against people using the system on false pretences. When Edna protested she should be considered eligible as a full pensioner, aged eighty-five, she was told she was 'not frail enough at this stage—gosh you'd have to be a real crock!'34 Indeed, only a small minority of frail older people in the 1980s were allowed formal home help. In March 1989 Edna admitted, 'I'm very happy with my progress but nevertheless I am OLD and reconciled to a restricted lifestyle'. A letter from her younger friend Deborah McCulloch who had just turned fifty in 1989 must have encouraged Edna: 'I am determined to love growing older. Of course you are a model to us in that, as in so much else. I think of you moving about your flat, as I saw you last time, so graceful and swift in your movements, enjoying yourself so much.'35

By April 1989, Edna's thoughts were again turning to the likely need to enter a retirement village. She could not keep up the pace with her own housekeeping: 'feeling low and dispirited and a little panicky that I am so weary... I can't just lie here untended and uncared for... Had an overwhelming desire to have someone to look after me.' But it would cost her the entire proceeds of the sale of her Glebe unit to enter Mowll Village: 'What robbing thieves the C. of E. Retirement villages are.' Besides taking almost her full pension they required a donation of about $30 000: 'I did weep for the first time, not at the prospect of death but the pre-death period.' Alternatively she would like a near neighbour who was 'sort of on call', but how would she find one?36

Despite deep concern about the cost of Mowll Village Edna concluded she had no choice but to take up her hostel booking there when she could no longer look after herself. She must sell up in the near future to move to Mowll despite the unappealing prospect: 'I will be remote from family and friends and not at all happy.' And so the pendulum swung from day to day. Perhaps she should stay in her Glebe unit by finding a daily housekeeper, with some help from her children? She still could not decide her future. She regretted her lack of stamina and her slowing mind and memory, which only permitted two hours a day at her typewriter.37

In July 1989 Edna's life improved greatly when she found an excellent home help privately. Margaret from Leichardt was efficient, speedy and also 'a lovely person', who brought relief and comfort to Edna's life: Edna felt so much better without the substantial housework: 'Amazing how much more that enables me to live.' Her friend Bobby Burke introduced Edna to another new window of life: her Macintosh Apple computer 'has captured my interest, enslaved me like a new lover'. She was enjoying having no pressures or deadlines, and her heart and blood pressure 'seem to love it'. But she must still reconcile herself to reduced activity and taking life quietly.38

Suddenly in June 1990, at the age of eighty-six, Edna's life was transformed by a phone call from Canberra from her friend Helen Prendergast, a fellow trade unionist. Helen had sold her family home to buy a large brick house with two self-contained units on a substantial block of land in Lyneham. Helen proposed that Edna should sell her Glebe flat to build an old persons' unit in the back garden of the Lyneham house, facing the sun, to begin creating a small colony of independent women in separate dwellings. Edna was delighted by this 'great idea', which allowed her to be independent while close to three friends and assistance if needed. A recent fall had left Edna more than ever aware that 'living alone isn't much fun when you need help. This way I can have it both ways—women around me but all of us living our separate lives'. This remarkable plan marked 'a new beginning instead of THE ending'. Rather than moving into an institution, Edna was embarking on a new and unexpected experience of old age in her later eighties. It allowed her to be close to family and grandchildren in Canberra without living with them.39 Instead of preparing to 'end her days', she would now look forward to a splendid new life: 'I'll have to live to be 90 now to enjoy the change.' Edna had invested the $70 000 from the sale of her Glebe flat and was currently paying Helen only $100 per week in rent; but would buy the unit once the investment matured. Edna moved to Canberra to live in December 1990 and soon felt years younger. Edna and her friend were 'personally compatible', and their relationship was so 'wonderful' she now believed she could reach her nineties without much deterioration.40

Two months later Edna had to accept that even the most idyllic existence could be interrupted by the trials of advanced old age. The first months of bliss were just a short release from her fate: 'to be an inactive old lady, fit only to sit in a rocking chair.' Her friend Helen tended to smile at her panic but she did sympathise when Edna despaired. Edna was especially tired after the activities of International Women's Day, but accepted at last that she usually bounced back. 'I don't complain, the false teeth, the hearing aids, the glasses and the [radio] are all essential equipment for me to know I'm alive and with a mind that functions.' Her routine included visitors and journal writing, a little shopping and housework, and writing occasional articles on industrial matters or feminist philosophy.41

However, though she assured her friend Bobby Burke that her sixties and seventies were active and fulfilling, 'it is the eighties that are the fearsome period'. Yet she had no regrets about her move to Canberra, especially with her addition of a new glass sunroom. 'Here I seem to be living with a big family with a variety of interests, events and occasions. A very seductive atmosphere.' Edna had no regrets, and her past in Glebe seemed gloomy by comparison.42 She was happy in herself and appreciating life in general. If she had her life over again, she would like to be an academic, perhaps a philosopher. However, she warned Bobby about the severe disadvantages of life in her eighties, especially the slowing of body and mind. All her activities had to be carefully planned. It was a self-centred life, striving not to inconvenience anyone and to survive without help. 'Almost every part of the body in turn threatens to break down.' It was impossible to plan in detail and every experience of ageing was different. The best advice was 'enjoy life while you have it'.43

Edna was almost eighty-eight and had to spend considerable time in taking care of herself, working so slowly against exhaustion that 'very little gets done'. 'One becomes so self-absorbed in old age that I seek to flee from myself.' The process of keeping a journal about her own experience of ageing must surely have increased this self-preoccupation. Edna now required a walking stick to minimise the danger of falling and breaking a hip or leg. By late 1992 she was despairing: 'I am at the end of my tether and must cease doing any work.' Edna aimed to obtain meals on wheels and more domestic help, but she did not want a live-in companion/carer, who might restrict her way of life. She might even need to move into a hostel in a retirement village at last, with meals provided and work done for her: 'It's that I do feel terrible and cannot cope... it is a feebleness.'44

However, as was often the case, Edna rested and partially recovered from 'my sorry state a few months back when I was dizzy and weak'. She did not consider her life was over: 'All my faculties are working, some in better form than the others.' She could still walk a good distance every day. Six months later her ageing pendulum swung against her once more, this time probably more permanently: 'Doing any writing causes my blood pressure to rise... evidently I risk a stroke (occlusion) I suppose by ignoring the warning signals... I've lost control of my own body—blast it.' On New Years' Day in 1994 she sadly noted, 'I do not expect to be making many entries in the future if the last few weeks are any indication'. About this time she left an unsigned copy of her will, which requested, 'Don't mourn but rejoice as I've had a good run and not being fit to work, I prefer to go'. There were no more diary entries, though Edna lived until 1997.45

Ten years before her own death, Edna had begun to think and dream of the past, 'of people dead and gone—Jack, my mother, my sisters'. She explained this in terms of a nostalgia among ageing people for a romantic and even ideal past compared with a stressful and disappointing present. She was 'really an orphan now' when the last of her siblings died later that year. She noted sadly that her friend Agnes Clark, aged ninety, wished to die in her own cherished room at home among her memories, but was obliged to die in a nursing home.46 In 1989 Edna shared the poet A.D. Hope's response to death: 'don't think much about it—depends on what circumstances.' Indeed, her references to death were largely confined to nostalgic recollections of the past, especially memories of her sisters, sadly missed. Edna was remarkable in her determination not to focus on death but instead live life to the full to the end. Nearly ninety in 1993 she did not see her life as over: 'I still have further to go in personal achievement.'47 Edna Ryan died in 1997 aged ninety-two. John Shields observed in _Labour History_ : 'With her passing, the... labour movement and the feminist movement lost a tireless, feisty, much loved and simply irreplaceable campaigner.'48 Edna Ryan also made a major contribution to our understanding of the ageing process and how society might improve it.

Edna Ryan's journal illuminates the 'Fourth Age' of assumed frailty so well because she was a survivor: her journals offer a pointer to the future as well as a commentary on the past. Increasing numbers of older women were living beyond eighty and surviving about five years longer than men. Despite the challenges that frail older age carried, in disabilities, personal losses and fears for the future, Edna succeeded in living an independent and worthwhile life in old age.

* * *

If we consider the century of ageing in Australia explored in this book, from 1880 to 1980, there was a huge contrast between the first sixty-five years from 1880 and the final thirty-five, demonstrating remarkable changes against considerable odds. The chief progressive feature of the earlier period was the granting of meagre old age pensions in 1908, but pensions remained far too low during the wars and depression. Most old people continued to live in poverty.

The period from the late 1940s stands in contrast, with slowly improving older people's health and living conditions, and reducing levels of poverty. The absence of world wars was a major benefit, as well as the twenty years of economic prosperity from 1950, with full employment and accelerated industrialisation. The welfare state was a benefit to older people in the longer term, though its immediate advantages were limited before 1954. From the 1950s a series of social surveys were conducted in Victoria, NSW and Queensland to ascertain the extent of the problems and recommend solutions. Efforts were made by the Brotherhood of St Laurence and organisations such as the Old People's Welfare Society to improve housing, social welfare and community awareness of the needs of older people. Geriatric physicians undertook the challenging work of social and medical rehabilitation of older people.

Moreover, demographic change and medical advances from 1945 to 1980 gradually extended the lives of older people, permitting them to consider retirement as a positive opportunity to enjoy a rewarding life in reasonable health. It was by no means a perfect situation by 1980, but it was a dramatic improvement on that in 1945, and a different world from the dire poverty and harsh asylums of the 1880s and 1890s. For those over eighty who were frail and dependent in Australia, the nursing homes of the 1980s could be bureaucratic and lonely, but they were infinitely better than their equivalent in the 1940s or, even worse, the 1880s. During the 1970s and 1980s ambitious reports, surveys and recommendations from government bodies aimed to improve health and community care for older people, and those efforts continue today.

The demographer Don Rowland predicts that the process of rapid ageing is advancing far beyond the limits anticipated in the 1980s. By the late twentieth century very low birth rates were accompanied by unexpected advances in the survival rates of those over seventy-five. The rapid gains in life expectancy in the twenty-first century may result in a crisis in the future, especially given the increase in the number of frail and dependent people over seventy-five. These people have been the fastest growing section of the older population from the 1990s, and include a majority of widowed women. Mortality from delayed degenerative diseases will increase as the frail and disabled are kept alive for longer. The average time in ill-health for those over eighty will rise, as will the likelihood of dying in a hospital or nursing home. Rowland notes that such challenges will not reach their peak until the 2020s, when health and welfare systems will need to be radically increased, though the quality of health provision might decline because of insufficient funding. However, Australia would be in a relatively favourable position compared with developing countries and Eastern Europe.49

This bleak prediction about the future of ageing in Australia may be ameliorated by scientific and medical advances in key areas such as cancer and dementia. We may also hope that, if such crises materialise, the lessons of the decades from the 1940s onwards may prove cautionary. The powerful sense of crisis about the immense problems of the ageing population in the later 1940s and 1950s helped to generate compassion and reform efforts from the community and charitable organisations, and belatedly from governments. A full sense of the enormity of the impact of population ageing in the future has not yet struck in Australia today. When it does, we must hope for an appropriate response in government planning and funding, as well as full support from the community. Effective social, economic and medical policy on ageing in the future should be informed by a rich understanding of its past history.

### Notes

1 Radford, pp. 4–9; Laslett, chs. 5–6.

2 Rowland, _Ageing in Australia_ , pp. 28–9, 48.

3 Job, passim.

4 Gibson, Diane, 'Getting Better Will Take Some Time', pp. 173–86.

5 Ryan, Edna, Journals, Papers, 1973, 1975, MS 9140, box 15, NLA.

6 ibid., 25 Jan. 1989.

7 Ryan and Conlon, 1975; Ryan, 1984.

8 Mitchell, pp. 61–77; Shields, pp. 187–9.

9 Mitchell, pp. 61–77 ('Edna Ryan, Author and Political Activist').

10 Ryan, Edna, Journals, Papers, Diaries, 23, 27 Oct. 1985, MS 9140, box 18, NLA.

11 ibid., 19 Jan., 29 Aug. 1987; 12 Dec. 1989, box 15.

12 ibid., 14 Aug. 1990, 29 Aug. 1987, 25 Jan. 1989, 18 Jan. 1987, box 26.

13 ibid., 1972, box 15; 8, 23 March 1973, box 17.

14 ibid., draft letter to Julia, 18 May 1973, box 15.

15 ibid., 1973.

16 ibid., 13 Oct. 1979, box 17; 10, 13 June, 8 Dec. 1981, box 9.

17 Kendig, 'Ageing and Housing Policies', pp. 106–7.

18 _SMH_ , 8 Oct. 1984, 29 Jan. 1987.

19 ibid., 29 Jan., 1 Oct. 1987; 4 Aug. 1988; 5 April 1989.

20 Ryan, Edna, Journals, Papers, Edna Ryan to Director, Anglican Retirement Villages, 13 March 1985; reply, 18 March 1985, MS 9140/12, NLA.

21 ibid., 3, 6 April, 16 May, 2 Aug. 1985, box 9.

22 ibid., 27 Oct. 1985, box 15.

23 ibid., Edna Ryan to Donald Coburn, 4 Nov. 1985, box 12; journals, 5–6 Nov. 1985, box 9.

24 ibid., 16 Nov. 1985, box 15.

25 ibid., Oct. 1986, box 9.

26 ibid., 25 Jan. 1987, box 15.

27 ibid., Edna Ryan to Donald Coburn, 3 Feb. 1987, box 12.

28 ibid., draft, Edna to daughter Julia, 7 Feb. 1987, box 28; Edna to Pat and Margaret, 11 Feb. 1987, box 9.

29 ibid., 5 March 1987, box 15; 4 March 1987, box 9.

30 ibid., 6, 8 March 1987, box 15.

31 ibid., 11 Nov., 4 Dec. 1987.

32 ibid., Edna Ryan to Julia, 13 Sept. 1987, box 28; 13, 18 Sept. 1987, box 15.

33 ibid., 1987–9.

34 ibid., 29 June 1988; 9 Jan., 1 March 1989.

35 ibid., Edna Ryan to Dorothy [Johnston?], 19 March 1989; Deborah McCulloch to Edna, 22 March 1989, box 26.

36 ibid., 18 April 1989, box 15.

37 ibid., 3 May 1989.

38 ibid., July–Oct. 1989.

39 ibid., 18–19 June, 2, 9 July 1990.

40 ibid., 8 March, 22 Jan., 8 Feb. 1991, box 16.

41 ibid., 11, 21 March, 4 June 1991.

42 ibid., 24 July, 10 Oct. 1991.

43 ibid., Edna Ryan to Bobby Burke, 26 Nov. 1991.

44 ibid., Aug.–Dec. 1992.

45 ibid., 12 Jan., 7 Feb., Sept. 1993; Jan. 1994.

46 ibid., 30 April, 15 Oct., 22 Dec. 1987, box 15.

47 ibid., 14 Jan. 1989, 7 Feb. 1993, boxes 15, 16.

48 Shields, pp. 187–9.

49 Rowland, _Ageing in Australia_ , ch. 5; Rowland, _Population Ageing_ , ch. 1.

## Select Bibliography

### ABBREVIATIONS

ACOSS | Australian Council of Social Service

---|---

ACOTA | Australian Council on the Ageing

_ADB_ | _Australian Dictionary of Biography_ , MUP

AGPS | Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra

_AJA_ | _Australian Journal on Ageing_

BSL | Brotherhood of St. Laurence

CUP | Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

LISWA | Library and Information Services of Western Australia, Perth

_MJA_ | _Medical Journal of Australia_

ML | State Library of NSW (Mitchell Library), Sydney

MS/MSS | Manuscript(s)/Papers (unpublished)

MUP | Melbourne University Press, Melbourne

NLA | National Library of Australia, Canberra

OUP | Oxford University Press, Oxford

SLV | State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

_SMH_ | _Sydney Morning Herald_

UNSW | University of NSW Press, Sydney

UQP | University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia

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Palmer Papers, NLA

Ryan, Edna, Papers, 1948-93, NLA

Shaw, Eliza, Diary, LISWA

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## Index

Ada B., 91–2

Adams, Nancy,

_Adelaide Advertiser_. _See_ newspapers and journals

aged care

frail elderly people: and housing, 215–16; numbers in aged care,

and government funding, , , , ; insufficient, ; 'user pays' strategy, 232–3

inadequate, ,

and philanthropic/charitable organisations,

policy, , ; neglect, , failure, 221–3, 224–5,

and reform, , 195–6, , , , 224–5, , , ; in 1980s,

_see also_ geriatric medicine; nursing homes

ageing

ageing as disease,

'ageism',

fourth age, 8–9, , , 269–70

and prejudice, ,

'successful ageing', 185–6

third age,

ageing in Australia

demography of, 5–6, 127–8, ,

diseases of old age, , , , , senile dementia, , ,

outlook for,

and race/ethnicity,

_see also_ old age; population in Australia

age pensions. _See_ pension, old age

Anderson, Fergus,

Andrews, Gary, ,

Arthur, Dr Richard, ,

Askin, Robert,

asylums for aged poor, ,

Adelaide Destitute Asylum,

conditions in, , , , , , , ; humane, ; inhumane, , , , 19–21, ; overcrowding, , , ; regimented,

Dunwich Asylum (Qld), 19–20,

Geelong Asylum,

and government funding, , , , , , , , ; federal,

Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, 16–17

Mount Royal Benevolent Home (Melbourne),

Newington Asylum for Women (Sydney), , ; as Newington State Hospital and Asylum for Women, 82–4; protests,

Parramatta Asylum, ,

and reform, ,

Rookwood (Lidcombe) Asylum (Sydney), , 84–6, 204–5

Sydney Benevolent Asylum, ,

in war and depression, 82–3, ; conditions in, 83–6, , ; reform delayed, 82–5,

_see also_ institutions for aged poor after 1945

Australia

health care funding and responsibility, , , , , 211–12, , , , 225–6, ,

pre-war economy in: depressions, , , , , , 93–8, ,

post-war economy: boom, , 237–8, ; decline of 1970s, , , , ; reconstruction, , 125–6, ; shortages,

as 'social laboratory',

world wars, , , , ,

_see also_ population in Australia

Australian Council of Social Services,

Australian Pensioners League, 93–4

_see also_ pensioners organisations

Australian Red Cross. _See_ philanthropic/charitable organisations and older people

Ball, Martha,

Ballard, Andre,

Barke, Olive, 136–7

Barnett, Rev. Oswald, ,

Bassett, Marnie, 61–2

Bligh, Winifred,

Bolton, Geoffrey,

Bond, Augustus,

Borowski, Allan,

Boyce, Canon Francis, 22–3, ,

Braithwaite, Valerie, 186–7

Bretherton, Albert,

Britain

influence on policies on old age in Australia, 4–5, , , , ; post-war, , , , , , , 205–6, , ,

_Poor Law Amendment Act 1834_ , ,

social reform in,

social surveys in, 149–50; on old age, , ,

transformation in ageing and care, ,

working class,

Brotherhood of St Laurence, , , , , , , , 132–42, , ,

_see also_ housing/accommodation and the elderly; institutions for aged poor; Tucker, Rev. Gerard Kennedy

Brown, Joan,

Brown, Nicholas,

Bruce government,

Burke, Bobby, , ,

Butler, Robert,

Caldwell, J.C.,

Cambridge, Ada, 37–43, , , 56–7

Cambridge, Rev. George, , ,

Carrum Downs. _See_ Brotherhood of St Laurence

Carter, Jan,

Cassady, Elizabeth, 49–51

Cavanagh, J., 96–7

Chaplin, Harry,

Charity Organisation Society (Citizens Welfare Service), , 27–8, , , 86–8, , , , ,

Chifley, Ben, ,

churches and the elderly,

housing, 143–4, , ,

Clark, Agnes,

Clarke, R.H.,

Clifton, Christina Elinor, , , , ,

Clifton, Christina Grant, 43–8

Clifton, Laura, , , , ,

Clifton, Robert, ,

Coburn, Donald,

Coleman Report,

Collings, J.S., 162–6,

Connell, Raewyn, 152–3

Cook, A.E.,

Coombs, H.C., 245–6

Cosin, Lionel,

Councils for the Ageing. _See_ Old People's Welfare Councils

Cox, Eva,

Cowper, Honey, , , ,

Cowper, Norman, , , , ,

Cummins, C.J., ,

Davidson, W.S.,

Davison, Graeme, , , ,

Davy, E.H.,

Deakin government,

Demography. _See_ ageing in Australia; population in Australia

Dempsey, Ken,

Dempster, Selwyn, 243–4

Dewdney, Micheline, 162–6,

diaries. _See_ elderly/older people

Dickey, Brian, , , , 31–2, ,

Diment, Max,

Dobell, William,

Dobson, George,

Doherty, Muriel, , , 193–6,

Donovan, Miss F.,

Downing, Richard, ,

Dunstan, Sir Albert,

elderly/older people 1880–1945

carers (family): gender imbalance, 47–8; men, ; social pressure (burden of care) on daughters, 186–7; women, , 44–5, , , 66–7, , , , , 109–10, ,

colonial period, 13–14; economic contraction, 25–6, 28–9, 67–70

employment, ; percentage in workforce, ,

experience of, , 41–3, , , 53–6; extreme old age, ,

as forgotten people, , , ,

health issues, ,

and (formal) home care,

influences on lives: economic conditions, , , , , 25–6, 28–9, , , , , , , ; medicine, ; politics, , , , , , , ; world wars, , , , ,

isolation and loneliness, , ,

and pension, , , ,

prejudice, 7–8, , , ,

as proportion of population, 1–2

sources of information on, , , , ; case files of organisations, , ; diaries, , , , , , , , , , , , ; essays, , , 40–1

vulnerability of, ,

_see also_ ageing in Australia; asylums; elderly poor people; federal government; older men; older women; pensioners organisations

elderly/older people after 1945

in aftermath of wars, depression, 126–9

community interest, , , ; volunteers, , ,

concern over increasing numbers,

elderly citizens' clubs, , 172–3, , , 183–4

and employment (men): discrimination, , , ; proportion in work, , , , , , ; rise in employment,

and family, , , , 154–5,

as 'forgotten people', , ,

of the fourth age, 8–9, , , , 269–70; and health,

government inaction, , , , ,

in health and happy,

health issues, 110–12, ; chronic illness, , , 192–3, , ; frailty, , , , , 158–9, , , 201–2, ,

and positive roles for,

and prejudice, , , , , , ; ageism, , ; misconceptions, 242–3

as proportion of population, 1–2,

retirement, , , ; pre-retirement counselling, ; and social usefulness, ,

social image of,

sources on: diaries, , ; letters, 112–13, ; social surveys, 151–8

visibility of, ; 1980s,

_see also_ elderly poor people; home and community care; housing/accommodation and the elderly; older men; older women; retirement for men

elderly poor people to 1945,

and economic conditions, , , , 25–6, , , ; in aftermath of wars, depression, 126–8,

as forgotten people, , , , 83–4, ,

health issues, 88–9, 91–2, , , , , ; accidents, , , , ; dental health, ; mental health, , 115–16,

institutionalisation of, , 16–25, , ,

and the pension, , , , , ; as a right,

poverty, , , 16–17, , , , , , , , , ; social causes,

seeking assistance, 89–90, ; 'deserving and undeserving' poor, 87–8, ,

unemployment, , , ,

working class: health problems, , ; poverty of,

_see also_ asylums for aged poor; housing/accommodation and the elderly; pensioners organisations

elderly poor people after 1945

activities, , ,

and employment, , ,

family and friends, , , , 166–7

health issues, , ; frailty, , ,

inner-city hardship, ,

loneliness,

living alone, , , ,

and the pension, , , , , , , ,

poverty, , 130–1, , , 155–6, , , , , ,

and reformers,

working class: and retirement,

_see also_ housing/accommodation and the elderly; institutions for aged poor

Elizabeth M., 89–90

Elkin, A.P.,

Ellen C.,

Elliott, Col.,

Ellis, Mr E.,

Ellis, Irene,

Encel, Sol, , , ,

Ettie H.,

federal government and older people to 1945

and aged care, ,

_Financial Emergency Act 1932_ , ,

_Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act_ _1908_ , , , ,

reluctance to act, , , , , ; in depression years,

_see also_ pension

federal government and older people after 1945,

_Aged Persons Homes Act 1954_ , , , , , , , ; amended, ; impact, 137–8, , , , , , ,

_Aged Persons Hostels Act_ ,

_Delivered Meals Subsidy Act 1970_ ,

funding: aged care, ; hostels, ; nursing homes, , , , , , 219–20, , , ; residential care, ; to states,

problem of state–federal division of responsibilities, , , , 211–12, , , , ; and local government,

reform, 231–2

reluctance to act, , ; on aged care, , , ; on housing,

'welfare state', , , , ; few benefits for elderly poor, ,

feminism,

Fink, Averil,

Ford, Ashley,

Ford, Bruce, 199–200,

Forell, Claude, 227–8

forgotten people. _See_ elderly/older people; elderly poor people

Forster, K. Murray,

Foster, A.J.,

Fox, J.D.,

Fox, Jean,

Fraser, Harold,

Fraser government, ,

Frizzell, Helen,

Gardner, Mrs M., 139–40

Garnett, B.,

Garran, Robert,

Garton, Stephen, ,

Gary, Alexander,

gender and ageing. _See_ old age; older men; older women

George and Minnie G., 88–9

geriatric medicine, , , , , , 191–212, , , ,

and funding, , , 211–12,  1950s to 1970s: NSW, 195–9, 200–7, , ; Victoria, , , , 207–8, ; WA, , , 208–11, , ,

as rehabilitation, , , 198–9, , , , 206–7, , , ; activities, ; teamwork, 199–200, ,

and social workers, 191–2, , , , ,

_see also_ Doherty, Muriel; Gibson, Dick; home and community care; hostels; Lefroy, Richard; Sax, Sidney

Germany

social insurance scheme,

Gerontology, 244–6,

Gibson, Diane, , ,

Gibson, R.M. (Dick), , 196–200, , , , ,

Giles Report,

Gilmore, Dame Mary, 42–3, 51–8, , ,

Gilmore, William, ,

Goodwin, Archd. Clive, ,

Gordon, Claire, 120–1

Grant, Mr and Mrs,

Halse, Hazel,

Hammond, Archd. Robert,

Harding, Malcolm, ,

Hauser, Richard, , 178–9,

Hawke government

Aged Care Reform Strategy,

Hawkins, Harold,

Hay, Joyce, ,

Hemer, J.M.,

Henderson, Beryl,

Henderson, Ronald, , ,

Henty, James, 60–4

Hetherington, Helen, ,

Hetherington, John,

Hogg, Mrs J.,

Hollingworth, Rev. Peter,

Holmes, Katie,

Holmes Report, ,

Holt government,

home and community care, , , , , , ,

and gender, , , ; toll on younger women, , , , ,

Home and Community Care Program (HACC), ; fees,

preferred option of senior citizens,

and services, , , , 163–4, , , , , , , , , , , , , 224–5, , , 265–6; funding, 184–5, , , , , , ; nursing care, , , , , , , , ,

Hope, A.D.,

hospitals and old age,

acute general, , , 88–9, ; and chronic cases, ; and geriatric medicine, 196–8, , 210–11, ; shortage of beds,

mental hospitals,

private, ,

hostels for aged people, , , , , , , , ,

regulatory system,

subsidies, ,

housing/accommodation and the elderly, , ,

boarding houses, , , , , , ,

campaigns for improvement, , 131–2, , ,

community housing,

evictions, , ,

government support, 137–8, , , , , , , ; and frail aged, 215–16, 221–2; limitations,

and homelessness, ,

'pensioners' homes',

and public housing, , 145–6; high-rise flats,

renting, , , , 136–7

shortages, , ; post-war, , , , , , , ; wartime,

and slums, , , , , , ; renewal,

_see also_ asylums for aged poor; Brotherhood of St Laurence; home and community care; hostels; institutions for aged poor; nursing homes; retirement villages

Howard government,

Howard, Julia,

Howe, Anna, , ,

Hughes, Geoffrey, ,

Hunter, Cecily, , , ,

Hutchinson, Bertram, , , ,

Hutchinson Report, , 150–61, , , , , ; contested, ; findings, 154–6, 158–9, , , ,

institutions for aged poor after 1945, , , ,

attitudes towards,

Caulfield Repatriation Hospital (Vic.),

conditions, 128–9

demand for places, , ,

Freemasons' Houses (Vic.),

and government funding,

and Hospitals and Charities Commission (Vic.),

Lara (Vic.), 140–2

Lidcombe State Hospital (and Home) (Sydney), 204–7, ,

Melbourne Benevolent Home,

and modernisation, , 207–8, 209–10

Mount Henry Home for Women (WA), 209–10

Mount Royal Benevolent Home (Melbourne), 128–9, 207–8

Newington State Hospital for Women (NSW), , ,

Old Colonists Homes (Vic.),

Sunset Home for Men (WA), ,

_see also_ Brotherhood of St Laurence; home and community care

Intergenerational Report,

Ireson, Josiah,

James, Jane,

James, John,

Jane S.,

Jean C.,

Jewel, James,

Job, Elena,

Johns, Reynell, , 64–7

Jones, Margaret,

Joseph and Elizabeth L., 87–8

Joshua, Christine, ,

Joshua, John (Jack), , 116–117

Judd, Bernard, ,

Kehoe, Mary,

Kelly, Mary, 16–17

Kendig, Hal, , , , , , ,

Kennedy, Richard, ,

Keon, Stan,

Kewley, T.H., ,

Kiel, Helen,

Kingston, Bev, 67–8

Kirby, Kay, 141–2

Kirkham, Mrs V.,

Lake, Meredith, 144–5

Lane, Alan,

Lane, William,

Lansbury, Russell,

Laslett, Peter, , 8–9, , , 235–6,

Laury, M.E., ,

Lawrence, R.J.,

Lawson, Mrs M.,

Lefroy, Richard (Dick), , , , , 208–11, , 221–2, ,

Legge, V.,

Lindsay, Lionel,

Lindsay, Norman,

Lord, Mrs E., 135–6

Lyne, William,

Lyon, Mrs V.,

Lyons, Joseph,

Lyons government, , , ,

McCaffrey, C.J.,

McCallum, John, , , , ,

McCalman, Janet, , 161–2, 236–7

McCrae, Andrew, ,

McCrae, Augusta, , ,

McCrae, George, 106–9,

McCrae, Georgiana, 104–7, ,

McCrae, Helen, , 104–5, , 108–9, , , 112–21,

McCrae, Hugh, , , , 104–5, , , 109–12, ,

McCulloch, Deborah,

McDonald, Peter,

Macintyre, Stuart, , ,

Mackennal, Bertram,

McKibbin, Rev. S.W., 175–6

McLeay Report, , 230–1

McMahon, William,

Maher, Elsa,

Main, James,

Marshall, Harry,

Martin, Bert,

Martin, Catherine,

Martin sisters,

Mater, O.W.,

Mathias, Mary, ,

Maxted, Edward, , ,

Maxted, Sydney, 23–4, , ,

medicine

advances in, , , , , ; new drugs, ,

and degenerative diseases,

impact on ageing and mortality, 6–7, , ,

and mental illness,

_see also_ geriatric medicine

Melville, Mary,

Mendelsohn, Ronald,

Menuhin, Hepzibah, ,

Menzies, Robert, ,

Menzies government, ,

Meyer, Felix,

Minichiello, Victor,

Moran, Doug, 220–1, 228–9,

Moore, T. Inglis, 51–2

Morris, Edward,

Moss, John,

Murphy, John, , ,

New South Wales and older people, colonial period

assistance to the poor, , 25–6; pension: criteria, 30–1

asylums in, , , 20–1, , ; numbers,

debate, inquiry into old age pensions, , , , 26–7, as a right, ,

impact of 1890s depression, , 25–6,

and Labor Party, , ,

legislation: _Old Age Pensions Act 1900_ , ,

poverty, 21–6

proportion of older people,

Royal Commission on Public Charities,

state as agent of change, 21–2,

New South Wales and older people, Federation to 1945

asylums, 82–6,

and housing,

and poor and destitute, ,

state as agent of change, , 3–4

New South Wales and older people from 1945

arousing awareness of plight of elderly, , 175–6, , ,

Council of Social Service, , ,

and government, , , , , , , , ,

housing/accommodation, 143–6; and frail elderly people, ; nursing homes, 215–17, 218–19, , ; retirement villages, 260–1

_see also_ Old People's Welfare Council (Council on the Ageing)

newspapers and journals and older people, ,

_Adelaide Advertiser_ ,

_Age_ , , , , , 242–3

_Argus_ , , 69–70, , , , , , , , , , 238–9

_Australian_ ,

_Australian Feminist Studies_ ,

_Australian Journal on Ageing_ , , , ,

_Canberra Times_ ,

_Herald_ (Melbourne), , , , , , , , ,

_Labour History_ ,

_Medical Journal of Australia_ , , , , , , , , ,

_Pensioner_ , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  238–9, , 242–3,

_Social Service_ , , ,

_Sun Herald_ (Sydney),

_Sydney Morning Herald_ , , 85–6, 176–7, , , , , 195–6, , , , , , ,

_Truth_ , 83–4,

_West Australian_ ,

_Woman's Day_ ,

_Worker_ ,

Newton, Ellen, 229–30

New Zealand,

Niall, Brenda, ,

Nunan, Marjorie, 101–2

nursing homes to 1950, ,

as 'rest homes', , ,

nursing homes after 1950, , , , , , , 215–33

abuses in, , ,

cost, , , ,

dementia care, ,

and frail aged, , , 216–17, ; demand, , ; in private, inferior nursing homes, ,

(federal) government expenditure, , , , , , 219–20, , ,

growth in, , , , , ; number of beds, 223–4, ; unintended,

inappropriate use of, , , , , , 225–6, ,

and lack of rehabilitation, , , , , ,

international comparisons, , , ,

nursing home experience, 229–30; reasons for entering, ; and return to the community,

private, , , ; as big business, 219–21, 228–9, , ; complaints, ; federal government subsidy, , , , , ; and quality, , , , ,

public discussion of,

regulatory regime, policies, , , , , , , failure, 221–2, ,

reviews and inquiries, , 226–7, , 230–1

run by religious and charitable organisations, , , , ; shortage of,

state government run,

O'Brien, Anne, ,

Ogilvie, Kate, , , 174–5, 182–3, , , , ,

old age

assumptions over time,

in different generations, 104–9, , , , , , 255–6

factors determining,

gender and experience of, , , 40–1, , 104–5, , , , , , , 135–6, , , ; imbalance in numbers, , , , 254–5, ,

and health, 158–9, , ,

official definitions, ,

and planning for,

older men

careers, 61–2, , , ,

in colonial period, , , 61–4, 67–8

and education, , ,

family support, , , , 66–7, , , , , , , ,

and financial security, , , , , , , , , , ; lacking,

as fortunate,

health, , , 66–7, , , 110–11,

and prejudice,

and religion, ,

_see also_ elderly/older people; retirement for men

older women

and employment, ,

financial security,

financial vulnerability, , 36–7, , , , , , , , , , , , , ; poverty, , , , 114–15,

frailty and poor health, , 45–7, 54–6, , , , , , , , , , ; loss of independence, , , ,

loneliness, isolation, , , , , , , ,

and prejudice, , ,

and retirement, ,

seen as dependents of men, , , ,

spinsters, , , , ,

and supportive family/networks, , , , 41–2, 44–8, , , , ; difficulties, ; lack of, ,

as widows, , , , 45–7, , ,

_see also_ elderly/older people

Old People's Welfare Council(s) (Council on the Ageing), , , , , 172–4, , , 182–4, , , ,

achievements, 183–4; lobbying for care of elderly in own home, ; as 'lobby of conscience', , , , , , , ; and nursing homes, , , ; and retirement, , ; and retirement villages,

and nursing home industry, , , , ,

Olney, Sir Herbert,

O'Sullivan, Edward, , ,

O'Neill, Mary,

Outhwaite, Margaret, , ,

Ozanne, Elizabeth,

Page, Jennifer,

Palmer, Aileen,

Palmer, Nettie, , , ,

Parbery, Grace, , ,

Parker, Elizabeth,

Parkes, Sir Henry,

Parle, Harold, 246–7

Parsons, Talcott, , ,

pensioners organisations, 93–102,

disunity, 96–7, , ,

and funeral insurance, , 98–9

and medical and pharmaceutical benefits,

as pressure groups, , , ,

and social activities, , , ,

in Victoria, , 94–101

pension, old age to 1945, ,

background to, , , 25–7, 29–30,

in depression, , , , 95–6

eligibility, , , 33–4, 114–15, , , ; means test, ,

increases, ,

meagre, , , , ,

pension, old age after 1945

as charity, ,

and entitlement, 177–8

increased, ,

level of, , , , , , ; differential rates,

means test, , , , , , , , ; and employment, , 238–9, 258–9

and medical treatment,

philanthropic/charitable organisations and older people

and aged care,

Australian Red Cross,

Benevolent Society of New South Wales,

churches, 143–4, , , ,

colonial period, , , 27–8, ; widowed families,

in Great Depression,

and housing, , , , , 132–6, , 140–2, 143–5; government assistance, 137–8, , , ,

Lions clubs,

Rotary clubs, 150–1

Salvation Army,

Sidney Myer Trust,

_see also_ Brotherhood of St Laurence; Charity Organisation Society; Old People's Welfare Councils; social justice/reform for the elderly

Picken, Miss M.,

Poate, Sir Hugh,

politics and older people

Labor Party, , , , , , , , , ,

Liberal–National Coalition,

Liberal Party,

and nursing homes,

United Australia Party,

Pollard, H.M., ,

population in Australia and ethnic origin,

fertility/birth rates, ; decline, , ,

and 'greying Australia',

Intergenerational Report of 2010,

and life expectancy, , ; rise in, , , , , , , , , 254–5,

mortality rates, ; decline, , , ,

post-war growth: baby boom, , ,

immigration: in th century, ; post-war, , , ,

proportion of older people, 1–2, , , , , , , , , ; in late 19th century, , , , ; population ageing, , , , , , , , , ,

Prendergast, Helen, 267–8

Prichard, Katharine Susannah, ,

Prinsley, Derek,

Procopis, G.S., ,

Queensland and older people

asylums, , , ; allowance,

old age pensioners, 166–7

Old People's Welfare Council, ,

Quick, Sarah,

racism

and the elderly: pensions, 30–1,

Rafferty, Catherine,

Reeves, William Pember,

Renny, Thomas,

Renwick, Sir Arthur, , , ,

retirement for men, 235–52: debate and adequacy of pension, , ; and poverty,

and discrimination against older men, , , , , ; and compulsory retirement,

and education, , ; U3A, 249–50

generational differences and retirement,

and gerontology: 'activity theory', 244–6, ; 'disengagement theory', , ,

life as a 'retired' person, , , ; active and independent phase, , , ; part-time employment, ; with superannuation, ; and voluntary work, 246–7,

and needs/state of the economy, , , , , ; and pressure for early retirement,

and problems in,

raising the retirement age, 237–8, ; and 'burden of dependency', , , 241–2, ; and improvements in medicine, health, ; and population ageing,

redundancy/retrenchment, , ,

retirement counselling and planning, , , , 247–8

retirement as gendered issue, 235–6, ,

retirement and health, ,

retirement in 1950s–60s: as vacuum, ; loss of status and activity, , , , ; retirees perceived as useless, ,

trend towards earlier retirement, ,

and working class, ,

retirement for women, , , , , ,

and superannuation,

retirement villages, , , , , 143–7, ; community activities, ; contributions from clients, , 261–2, , ; and industry, , ; and need, ; nursing care, therapy, ,

Robertson, George,

Roe, Jill, , , ,

Rooney, James,

Rowland, Don, , , , ,

Rowntree, Seebohm,

Ryan, Edna, , 254–70

_see also_ older women; pension; retirement villages; Women's Electoral Lobby

Ryan, Jack,

Ryan, Julia, , , ,

Ryan, Lyndall, ,

Ryan, Patrick, , ,

Saint, Eric, 192–3

Sambell, Geoffrey,

Sax report, , , 202–4, ,

Sax, Sidney, , , , , 201–4, , , 211–12, , , , , 244–5

_see also_ geriatric medicine

Scott, David,

Selle, Dr,

Shaw, Elizabeth, 43–4

Sheldon, J.H., , ,

Shields, John,

social justice/reform for the elderly

churches/clergy, ,

pensioners in 1930s, 92–3, 94–8

post-war, , , , , , , , ,

rescuing 'the forgotten people',

social workers, , ,

social surveys on old age in Australia, , 149–68,

in Adelaide,

in Brisbane, 166–7

Henderson Reports: on poverty, 167–8, ; and the elderly, 167–8,

in Richmond (Melbourne), ; on the old age pension, 162–6,

in Melbourne,

in Newcastle,

in Sydney, 177–81, , , , ,

_see also_ Hauser, Richard; Hutchinson, Bertram; Hutchinson Report

Social Welfare Action Group (SWAG) and nursing homes,

Sociology, 149–50

South Australia and older people

colonial period, , , ; Aged Poor Royal Commission, ; asylums, ,

government policies, , 24–5

Old People's Welfare Council,

prejudice,

Sprague, Elizabeth,

Springthorpe, John, , 72–8

Stanley, Thomas,

Stannage, Tom,

Steele, A.J.,

Stewart, K.J.,

Stoller, Alan,

Stoyles, Megan,

Strange, Dorothy,

Strong, Rev. Charles,

Superannuation, , 258–9

Tabbner, R.,

Talbot, William,

Tasmania and older people

colonial period, ; asylums in, ,

Old People's Welfare Council,

Tate, Audrey,

Thane, Pat, , , , , ,

Thomas, Beryl, 221–2,

Thompson, Catherine,

Tucker, Rev. Gerard Kennedy, , 132–42

_see also_ Brotherhood of St Laurence

Turner, George,

University of the Third Age, 249–50

Victoria

immigration,

post-war economy, ; boom,

young people moving to outer suburbs, ,

Victoria and older people to 1945

colonial period: asylums in, , 16–17, , ; depression of 1890s, , 68–70; pauperisation and stigma, , , , ; pension scheme, , 31–2, ; proportion of older people, ; Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions, , 27–9

and housing/accommodation, ; shortages,

improvements in 1940s,

nursing homes,

and old people's welfare centres,

pension to 1908,

prejudice, ; 'undeserving poor', 27–8,

state as agent of change, 3–4

Victoria and older people after 1945

arousing awareness of plight of elderly, , , , , ,

concentrations of older people,

and government, , , ; support, ,

and housing: crisis, , 130–1, ; high-rise flats, ; programs, 132–3, , , 140–3

_see also_ Hutchinson Report; Old People's Welfare Council (Council on the Ageing); social surveys on old age

war

Second World War: holocaust and concentration camps, ,

_see also_ Australia

Warren, Marjorie, , ,

Watt, Ernest,

Weigall, Gerald,

Welfare state. _See_ federal government and older people

Wentworth, W.C., ,

Western Australia and older people,

aged care in, 192–3,

colonial period, ,

geriatric medicine in, , , 208–11, , ,

and isolation,

nursing homes: private and for profit, ,

Old People's Welfare Council,

White, Edward John, , 67–71

Whitlam government,

Wilde, W.H., ,

Williams, Edward,

Willmott, Peter,

Wisenholt, Louis, ,

Witlowe, Cr.,

Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL), , , , , ,

Woodhead, Emma,

Wright, Judith, ,

Young, Michael,

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