Guest speech by Dr Hugo Ree

going to the gums Exhibition opening, Redland Museum 31 May 2007

A history of leprosy

Your Excellency, The Governor of Queensland, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

On May 9, 1889, the Queensland Colonial Secretary ordered the removal of seven Chinese men, all suffering from leprosy, to Dayman Island in the Torres Straits.  The island was, and is still, totally uninhabited and devoid of any amenities, but it is said to have a good natural water supply. The men were provided with food, seeds, fishing tackle and some tools; two military tents were put up for their accommodation.  The steamer that had brought them then sailed away. 

This was the opening chapter in a long history of the incarceration and segregation of patients with leprosy in Queensland, a story that would not end until the closure of Fantome Island in 1973.  Sir Horace Tozer, the Colonial Secretary of the time, had doubts about the legality of the incarceration, and so, in 1892, he introduced a Leprosy Bill into the Legislative Assembly.  After some spirited debate, this bill quickly became law; it validated the previous detention of leprosy patients, and gave the Colonial Secretary, later the Home Secretary, broad powers to order the segregation of people with the disease. 

Up till then, all the patients had been either Chinese or South Sea Islander men, but also in 1892, the first of a number of white men was notified with the disease.  Tozer was in no doubt that white patients could not be sent to the Torres Straits, that would be quite unacceptable, so he ordered the setting up of a small institution, next to the Benevolent Asylum on Stradbroke Island, for male white patients.  The numbers of these patients increased, albeit slowly; in 1895, the first white female was ordered into segregation.  But where to put her? 

The authorities asked the government of New South Wales if they would help out, but were tartly told that Queensland should expect more women, and therefore should make its own arrangements. The government was certain that it was responsible for this girl’s moral welfare, so she was initially housed on Peel Island, in the care and control of an elderly couple.  This was not a success, and she was eventually moved to Stradbroke Island.

A report of 1904 described the lazaret on Stradbroke as an inhospitable place, lying next to a swamp, dark and miserable.  The government decided that a new purpose built lazaret should be constructed, this time on Peel Island.  This was opened in 1907, and all patients, white and what were then called coloured, transferred there.  Each hut for the white patients cost 58 pounds, for the coloured, 3 pounds.

In the year 1892, when the Leprosy Act was introduced, there were twelve notifications of leprosy.  In the same year 601 patients died of tuberculosis, yet nothing was being done for this disease by the public health authorities, and I specifically mention tuberculosis, because the organisms that cause these two diseases are very closely related.  How did this curious state of affairs come about?  One answer can be found in dictionaries that are twenty or more years old, many of which give two meanings for the word leprosy.

The first, correctly, is: a chronic infectious bacterial disease affecting skin and nerves.  The second is ‘moral corruption.’ Not even the venereal disease, syphilis gets this sort of treatment.  It is this second meaning that patients with leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, have had to contend with over the years, as the two definitions have become gradually conflated into a single one giving rise to the sense that somehow they have developed a chronic bacterial infection through some moral faults of their own.  That burden continues to this day. 

A second answer can be found in the very fact of the small number of patients with Hansen’s Disease.  It is easy enough to lock up twenty or fifty, or even a hundred people, especially if they are deemed undesirables, such as the Chinese and South Sea Islanders, and later Aborigines, were at the time, but it is politically inexpedient to lock up hundreds or thousands of white patients.  A third answer lies in the sad fact that, in contrast to tuberculosis, Hansen’s Disease may lead to quite severe disfigurement and deformity.   It may surprise you to know that the most common adjective used to describe Hansen’s Disease in the 19th century was the word ‘loathsome.’ This gave governments the opportunity to say that they were being considerate of the sensibilities of the patients.  Last but not least, similar arrangements were being made in other parts of the world, though relatively few jurisdictions chose a deserted island as a suitable place for a lazaret.

Before the advent of new treatments after the Second World War, very few patients ever left the island cured, a small number tried to escape, usually unsuccessfully, and most died, to be buried, in quicklime, because that was what the regulations said had to be done, on Peel Island.  Some committed suicide. The cemetery there is a sad, dark place.

 In January 1940 all the coloured patients were removed, by train and boat and under police escort, from Peel to Fantome Island, part of the Palm Island Group, off the coast from Townsville. 

The Peel Island lazaret closed in 1959, more than a dozen years after the first successful trials of a new drug for Hansen’s Disease were completed.  For reasons that are far from clear, Fantome Island continued in use for another fourteen years. During the fifty-two years of the Peel Island lazaret, about five hundred patients were incarcerated there.  In the opinion of many, they were dealt with harshly, especially as there was little scientific evidence to justify incarceration.  But ordinary people were terrified of this exotic, strange moral corruption, and readily accepted the need to interfere in people’s liberty; some doctors supported incarceration, a few objected.  In 1892, Dr. Lyons, a well-known Brisbane surgeon talked of a return to mediaeval barbarism, but his views were ignored. 

We are here today to acknowledge the existence of the Peel Island lazaret, opened a hundred years ago this month, to remember those who were incarcerated there, and to hope that those who died and are buried in the cemetery in unmarked graves, have found peace.  Peel Island is a fundamental and integral part of Queensland’s historical heritage. This exhibition is about that heritage, and I hope that as people come to understand what happened during those fifty-two years they will come to see the need to spend money for the preservation of that heritage, and also to take a few moments to ponder on the question of power and how it is used.

Thank you.