Asylum Postcards

Asylum postcards provide an excellent visual record of the mental hospital over time. While today’s audiences may find these postcards rather grim, photographers of the past found asylum buildings impressive and visually pleasing. For postcard production, photographers sought out appealing scenes including asylums, schools, post offices, main streets and other landmarks.

The design and construction of asylums were based on the principles of moral treatment, where the asylum served as a therapeutic landscape. Key features of this therapeutic landscape included grand-scale buildings with airing courts and courtyards, all set within picturesque botanical gardens designed as a healing natural environment. The Beechworth Lunatic Asylum opened in 1867 and exemplified these concepts with its palatial three-storey Italianate building set in extensive grounds including a farm.

The postcard above is a colourised photograph showing the curved entryway and the exterior of the administrative buildings at Mayday Hills Mental Hospital with three young boys in the foreground. The 200-acre site at Beechworth was chosen for its hilltop aspect that commanded a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, which it was hoped would be beneficial to patients.

The postcard above is a black-and-white photograph showcasing the curved driveway and manicured lawns leading to the Beechworth Mental Asylum administration building. Similar in angle to the previous postcard, this image lacks both people and colorization. Despite this, it effectively emphasizes the grand facade and beautiful gardens.

The postcard above presents a painting by C.F. Falk offering a perspective from Farm Hill. This artwork depicts the asylum’s appearance in 1930, showcasing its extensive buildings and the complete ha-ha wall, of which only remnants survive today. A ha-ha wall is a vertical wall with a sloping ditch on one side designed to deter escape attempts.

The postcard’s inscription, ‘Asylum for Insane’ illustrates the evolving language used to describe people who are mentally unwell as ‘insane’ is no longer in use. Renamed Mayday Hills Psychiatric Hospital in 1978 until it was decommissioned in 1995 and subsequent sale to La Trobe University, the site has undergone several name changes over time, reflecting changes in the understanding of mental illness over the century:

• Beechworth (Asylum 1867-1905)
• Hospital for the Insane (1905-1934)
• Mental Hospital (1934-1967)
• Mayday Hills Mental Hospital (1967-1991)
• Mayday Hills Psychiatric Hospital (1978-1995)

Returning to asylum postcards, Bogdan and Marshall’s research on asylum postcards from the United States revealed a surprising trend: “sixty-six percent of the cards in our collection that have messages make no reference to the asylum, to the patients that are housed there, or to any topic related to institutions or mental illness.

Rather than focusing on the asylum or its patients, senders often used these postcards to share personal news or travel updates, treating them like any other postcard. This suggests that postcard publishers and photographers produced asylum postcards primarily as commercial products, emphasizing visually appealing landmarks rather than the institution’s purpose.

Written by Dr Alison Watts, Adjunct Lecturer at Southern Cross University.
See Alison’s full bio here

References:
Bogdan, R., & Marshall, A., 1997. Views of the asylum: Picture postcard depictions of institutions for people with mental disorders in the early 20^th century. Visual Studies, 12(1), 4-27.
Kerr, James, Semple. Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Australia’s Places of Confinement, 1788-1988, Australia: S.H. Ervin Gallery, 1988.
Piddock, Susan. The ‘Ideal’ Asylum and nineteenth-century lunatic asylums in South Australia in C. Coleborne & D. MacKinnon (eds) Madness in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum: University of Queensland Press, 2003.
Woods, Carole. Beechworth: A Titan’s Field. North Melbourne: Hargreen Publishing Company, 1985.

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