Claremont Hospital for the Insane

Description

DescriptionClaremont Hospital for the Insane, also known as Claremont Asylum, was the original part of what is now Graylands Hospital.
Between 1903 and 1972, it was the main mental health facility in Western Australia.
Patients at Fremantle Asylum were transferred to Claremont by 1909 as buildings are Claremont were completed.

General information from the 'Find and Connect' website:
"Claremont Hospital for the Insane was established in 1903, becoming known as the Claremont Mental Hospital in 1933. It was a government-run facility that accommodated children and young people with intellectual and other disabilities until the hospital closed in 1972.

Claremont Mental Hospital was Western Australia’s main mental health institution from 1903 to 1972. Children with intellectual and other disabilities were sent there, often for a lifetime. Even after the juvenile wing was opened it was not uncommon for children and adolescents to be in the same wards as adults.

Claremont Hospital for the Insane (‘Claremont’) was established by the Government of Western Australia in 1903 as a hospital principally for adults’. Patients were gradually transferred from the Fremantle Asylum until its closure in 1909. Children and young people with disabilities were among those transferred from Fremantle and continued to be admitted to Claremont until its closure.

Building started at Claremont in 1903 and men from the overcrowded Fremantle Asylum were housed in the new workshops and stores buildings as soon as they were habitable. By 1907 the female block was built and women and girls started being transferred from Fremantle. In 1910, a new ‘chronics’ block, designed to take 250 people, was added. Children with intellectual disabilities were housed in that block.

In its design and location, Claremont demonstrated the medical views of its superintendent, Dr Sydney Montgomery, who believed it should be in the Perth metropolitan area, but not part of the city, and on a hill, so that the fresh breezes could wash away disease-carrying ‘miasma’, with sufficient land for a farm that provided work and produce. Claremont was to be designed to be large enough to cope with a growing population, with separate male and female wings." [https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/entity/claremont-mental-hospital/]Alternative titleClaremont Mental HospitalClaremont AsylumAddressClaremontLocation^[1]

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