A historic photo of nurses at the asylum
Not much is known about the history of Building One, it has gone through plenty of name changes, but the only information we could find was a small booklet detailing how it was built in 1865 as a place to put people who did not conform to the social norms of the time. It was built in sections as more and more people were committed, keeping the males and females in separate wings.
He had also heard of staff getting their papers ruffled when there was no breeze in a room.
It was built to be a self-contained hospital, with staff quarters, medical facilities and administration in the centre. While it was styled as a hospital, the building and the way patients were treated made it seem more like a prison.
“It has a sad history,” Hoverd says.
In an article compiled by The Asylum Collective, Dr Fraser McDonald discusses the nurse to patient ratio that saw one nurse look after 130 patients in 1974 when he worked there as a psychiatrist.
“There would have been suicides, there might have been deaths because of maltreatment from staff or other patients, a lot of which would have not been recorded or reported…swept under the carpet,” Hoverd says.
He says the patients ran the ward, and a hierarchy was evident as to how this was done. The nurses had favourites who they gave power and control to. They were unwilling to discharge their good patients who ran the hospital, “if they had been discharged the hospital would cease to function,” McDonald says. However, as the history of mental health shows, the patients were treated more like a prisoner than a person.
One death that is known of occurred in 1877, when a fire broke out, killing one female and destroying the first floor of the east wing.
“The best nurses were in fact like kindly farmers who looked after their flocks of strange animals in the most humane way they knew how. The possibility of really treating them like other human beings often didn’t cross their minds,” McDonald says. Artist Madeleine Heron echoes this belief. She was admitted to Carrington in 1983.
Before medication of the 50s, the only way to restrain or “treat” a patient was through confinement, shock treatment, lobotomies and straight jackets.
There was a mortuary to accompany the building, so it is suffice to say, a lot of people would have died there over the years.
In addition to this, in a Sunday Star Times article in 2000, reporter Miriyana Alexander says a patient at the institution, then named Oakley, died in 1982 after he was subject ECT treatmentelectroconvulsive therapy. In 1994 Unitec bought the building to hold design and art classes in, as the Asylum Collective article says, “as one culture replaced another, dormitories turned into studios and cells became offices.” Hare Paniora says Unitec blesses Building One when students or staff need them to, he believes there is a “spiritual dimension or element” to the building.
“I found Carrington terrifying to enter as a patient, it felt like entering a prison.” She found the staff unconcerned with her as a person, but more concerned with keeping her “controlled and docile,” she writes.
Mount Albert was occupied by Maori in the pre-European days, says Paniora. This is why they have had kaumatua bless the land since the early 90s. The most recent blessing was two years ago.
She felt separated from the community due to its lack of real interest or care, and the building “overwhelmingly oppressive, both in terms of architecture and clinical practice.”
He says some people feel a presence, whereas others are not sensitive to it, but for those who are, if they are distressed Unitec will arrange a blessing.
Safety and Security’s Paul Hoverd takes a keen interest in the history of the building and often hears stories from lecturers in the area.
However, it is not to rid the area of spirits. Paniora goes on the advice of elders who say the sprits have been there so long, they won’t leave. So it is easier to leave them be, they are asleep and if they wake them up, it could be problematic, he says.
“Apparently lecturers have heard old music playing at night, and not heard where it comes from, as would be played on an old gramophone, you could imagine someone putting it on for the inmates, just to have some music playing.”
In Unison, After Dark.indd 14
“It is my belief we don’t want them returning back and being present with the living. We let them sleep, we leave them there.”
27/03/2009 8:47:29 a.m.