Lakeside Mental Hospital, originally known as Ballarat Asylum, later as Ballarat Hospital for the Insane and finally, before its closure, as Lakeside Psychiatric Hospital, was an Australian
psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociat ...
located in the suburb of
Wendouree
Wendouree () is a large suburb on the north western rural-urban fringe of the city of Ballarat, in Victoria, Australia. It is the second most populated suburb in the City of Ballarat with a total of 10,376 inhabitants at the .
It is named af ...
, the north-western fringe of
Ballarat,
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
,
Australia.
The hospital first opened in 1877 for the "
imbecile
The term ''imbecile'' was once used by psychiatrists to denote a category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability, as well as a type of criminal.Fernald, Walter E. (1912). ''The imbecile with criminal instincts.'' Fourth editi ...
and
idiot
An idiot, in modern use, is a stupid or foolish person.
'Idiot' was formerly a technical term in legal and psychiatric contexts for some kinds of profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot ...
" (low intellect) class of patient rather than patients with acute insanity.
It closed again soon after.
A
reformatory
A reformatory or reformatory school is a youth detention center or an adult correctional facility popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western countries. In the United Kingdom and United States, they came out of social concern ...
for boys also operated on the site, and some of its buildings were reused when the hospital was reopened in 1893, specialising in the treatment of epileptics.
A brick building was converted into a ward to house 30 male patients. This was extensively damaged in a fire in 1917.
A report in 1895 said that the patients did not have enough warm clothing, and that they were shivering during the cold Ballarat winter. Proposals to expand the asylum were mooted in 1909. Large scale extension and alteration were put forward by the state government in 1916.
In 1934, the Ballarat Asylum was renamed Ballarat Mental Hospital and, in 1969, the name changed again to Lakeside Hospital.
Lakeside Hospital was decommissioned in 1996.
The hospital at its peak employed about 600 staff and could hold 1500 patients.
[ The site was 83 hectares, of which 40 hectares was used as a farm.][ Crops planted in 1910 included leeks, cauliflowers, ]onion
An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onio ...
s, rhubarb, potato
The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae.
Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...
es, pumpkins, carrots, tomato
The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...
es, celery
Celery (''Apium graveolens'') is a marshland plant in the family Apiaceae that has been cultivated as a vegetable since antiquity. Celery has a long fibrous stalk tapering into leaves. Depending on location and cultivar, either its stalks, ...
, beetroot, peas, beans and parsnip
The parsnip ('' Pastinaca sativa'') is a root vegetable closely related to carrot and parsley, all belonging to the flowering plant family Apiaceae. It is a biennial plant usually grown as an annual. Its long taproot has cream-colored skin an ...
s. In 1907, a Dr. Cherry reported that the patients helped to compress green fodder crops for storage by dancing jigs and reels on them to the accompaniment of a fiddle.
The site is now used for the Ballarat Aquatic Centre, a number of sporting facilities, and the Lake Gardens
Lake Gardens is a neighbourhood of South Kolkata, in Kolkata district, West Bengal, India.
It has Kalighat to the north, Jodhpur Park to the east, Prince Anwar Shah Road or Tollygunge to the south and Charu Market to the west.
The famous Gol ...
housing estate. Some original building are still standing and have been renovated and reused.
Incidents
An outbuilding burned down in 1898. In 1909, an incident between inmates resulted in the death of one by pick-axe.[Benalla Standard. 29 January 1909 p 4] In 1917, a large fire destroyed one of the wings which was formerly the boys reformatory school.
See also
* List of Australian psychiatric institutions
References
External links
*
{{Hospitals in Victoria
Psychiatric hospitals in Australia
Defunct hospitals in Australia
Hospitals in Victoria (Australia)
Hospitals established in 1877
1990s disestablishments in Australia
1877 establishments in Australia
Ballarat