Cumberland Hospital Museum

Forget Freddy Krueger et. al. Real nightmares are made of canvas!
I’m talking canvas straitjackets and canvas «muffs» and «mittens.» Don’t be fooled; for all the Louisa May Alcott-​y appeal conjured by names like «muffs» and «mittens,» they were designed for the prevention of excessive scratching and erm… other «excessive» devilish activities for idle hands. As for the straitjackets, according to the exhibits, you’ll be pleased to know they were finally outlawed at the Cumberland Hospital by the mid-​1960s in favour of more «humane» treatments. And not a day too soon…
Leather ankle and wrist restraints, waxed cardboard «Brain Buckets» used during autopsies, 1930s amputation knives, a mean looking enema and douche apparatus, a cadaver-​measuring ruler, a trolley from the morgue, nurses’ uniforms, a cabinet of chemist’s products and «quackery,» a collection of ward keys that locked away patients, and a chronological display of ECT (electroconvulsive «shock» therapy) machines all make this a confronting and comprehensive repository of mental health care history. You don’t get a sense of the undoubtedly heartbreaking personal side of that history here, though, with the exception of one glass case of items recovered from beneath various wards: fading, ripped sepia photos of nameless loved ones, old spoons and countless keys (what were the «locked up» locking away, I wonder?), letters, ciggies and specs. If only these objects could talk!
It’s all jam-​packed into the upper floor of «Glengarriff House» (a.k.a. Cumberland Hospital Museum), located on the sprawling grounds of the present day Cumberland Hospital (Psychiatric). Glengarriff House itself is a significant part of the history of mental health as it was the official residence of the Medical Superintendent of the Parramatta Hospital for the Insane (1907 – 1963). The museum is only open during the 4 days of the annual Wisteria Gardens Festival (in September) or by appointment and admission is a mere $ 1 (or nothing at all if you get to the top of the stairs and find no one to collect y’coin or no place to deposit it for safekeeping… Oops! Please accept my review as payment!).
I recommend you do as I did and visit the museum before or after fully exploring the grounds of the Cumberland Hospital, which is an absolute hotspot of historically significant sites dating back to Australia’s colonial era. For example, as early as the 1840s, the former «Female Factory» became the Parramatta Asylum for Lunatic and Invalid Convicts, giving this site a long historical association with mental health «care» — if you can call it that.
One further recommendation: I normally encourage people to take young people to historical museums, but this one is really not for the very young kiddies. Bearing in mind my personal phobia of life-​sized cardboard cut-​outs and things of that ilk, I think the creepy looking mannequins on display here alone possess the power to send me well ‘n’ truly out o’ my faraway tree. If that happens I’ll be making the following request: not the mittens. Please… NOT THE MITTENS!
* Review originally written and posted 22 September 2013.