The sad story of Tasmania's Theodora Weston

Spare a thought for a young woman Theodora Weston, born in 1870, who suffered from schizophrenia.

Treatment was primitive and a great deal of stigma was attached to this condition.

Theodora was the daughter of Edward Weston (MLC for Longford from 1872 until his death from a fall from his wagonette in 1877) and his wife Kate McCarthy Clerke who lived at 'Hythe' in Longford.

After Edward's death, the family moved to 'Altmor' in High Street.

Theodora attended Methodist Ladies College and in 1889 received a Junior Pass in her Trinity College London Theory of Music exam.

In 1890 she obtained her St John First Aid Certificate.

Theodora and other members of her family held season tickets to the Tasmanian Exhibition held in Launceston in 1891-92.

She is one of those whose photo and biography appears in the Launceston Family Album: www.launcestonfamilyalbum.org.au

This website enables people around the world to see and read about those who had season tickets and often leads to more information coming forward.

Recently a person researching women taken to hospitals and asylums, as part of her work as a Historical Textiles Artist, alerted us to the fact that Theodora appears on the cover of 'Presumed Curable: an illustrated casebook of Victorian psychiatric patients in Bethlem Hospital' by Colin Gale and Robert Howard, published in 2003.

In the photograph she is wearing the hospital's 'strong clothing' which was difficult to take off without help, or to tear.

Theodora had been taken to London by her family, seeking treatment for her illness.

She was admitted to Bethlem Hospital, aged 23, on July 28, 1894.

Her sister Ruth Weston is quoted as saying 'She has hallucinations, fancying that people are outside to whom she makes signals and converses ... she refuses food under the idea that it is poisoned.'

The superintendent of Bethlem wrote that 'She is in a state of dementia. ... I consider her dangerous to herself. She is restless and wanders about. ... She is withdrawn and her behaviour increasingly unpredictable.'

She began treatment with prolonged baths, initially for an hour a day but this increased to seven hours a day and was discontinued when she developed abrasions on her back.

She was discharged uncured and transferred to Peckham House, a private lunatic house in South London.

Theodora returned to Australia and died, still institutionalised, in Victoria in 1939.

Bethlem Hospital had been founded as the Priory of the New Order of the Lady of Bethlehem in the thirteenth century.

It has the dubious distinction as being the source of the word 'bedlam', meaning uproar and confusion.

Bethlem hospital still exists, on a different site, within the UK National Health Service and with vastly improved services for those who need to seek treatment.