History
Royal Park opened as a Receiving House in September 1907. Receiving Houses were used to provide accommodation for those patients who required only short term diagnosis and treatment. No person was to be detained in a receiving house for more than two months in any event. Patients diagnosed as insane were transferred to a Hospital for the Insane such as Kew Asylum or Yarra Bend Asylum by order of the Superintendent of the Receiving House. Following the completion of some of the hospital wards, Royal Park was gazetted as a Receiving House and a Hospital for the Insane on 7 April 1909.
Since its establishment the title of Royal Park Hospital has been altered to reflect both the community's changing attitude towards mental illness and the Victorian Government's approach to the treatment of mentally ill persons. The Mental Hygiene Act 1933 (No.4157, proclaimed 14/2/1934) altered the title from "Royal Park Hospital for the Insane" to "Royal Park Mental Hospital". Up until 1954 Royal Park functioned as a mental hospital for long term patients and a receiving house for short term patients. In April 1954 Royal Park's function as a Mental Hospital was revoked, published in the Government Gazette on 7 April 1954. From 1954 Royal Park functioned as a hospital providing short term diagnosis and accommodation only. The Mental Health Act 1959 (No.6605, operational since 1962) changed the title of "Receiving House" to "Psychiatric Hospital".
A special Military Mental Hospital was opened at Royal Park in 1915. The date range of this hospital is unknown.
Read more about this topic: Royal Park Hospital
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)