Robert Louis Stevenson, Author of the ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ (1886) said, “All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil”.
On this ‘Mindfulness Month NZ’, allow me to familiarise you with one of Aotearoa’s most celebrated and controversial figures: Sir Frederic “Truby” King (1858 – 1938). In 1858, Truby was born to privileged English parents in Taranaki and was a sickly child. At the age of 22, he decided banking was not his forte and moved to Edinburgh to train as a doctor. In 1886, he graduated with a Master of Surgery.
In 1884, Seacliff Lunatic Asylum in Dunedin NZ was opened (the nation’s largest). In 1889, Truby was appointed medical superintendent. Stay tuned for part 2.
Truby and his wife Isabella “Bella” did not have biological children; in 1904, they adopted baby Mary. Bella asked Truby to design a better feeding formula, as she was not satisfied with Mary’s progress. He trained one of the Seacliff nurses in infant feeding, paid her himself, and asked she give advice to mothers in Dunedin.
On the 14th of May 1907, he gave a talk on the promotion of health of women and children. In 1907, Whānau Āwhina Plunket was born: a nationwide charitable organisation that assists parents with raising their infants. Truby believed in the merits of natural feeding and considered artificial feeding incorrect. He stresses regulating feeding, sleeping, exercise and excretion. He and Plunket held the belief that virtually all babies could and should be saved.
In 1906, Truby published ‘The Evils of Cram’, seeking reforms of the education system. Cram exalts the ‘learner’ above the ‘thinker’ and the ‘doer’ and gives its prizes to the crammer rather than to the honest worker. Cram is recognised as a leading factor in the production of degeneracy, making many women unfit for maternity and both sexes incompetent.
In 1910, the Dunedin branch of the Eugenics Education Society (EES) was established, of which Truby was allegedly a member. In 1911, Aotearoa passed the Mental Defectives Act and a further amendment Act in 1928, which facilitated the permanent segregation of those deemed mentally defective. In 1927, Theodore Gray’s Report ‘Mental Deficiency in New Zealand’, showed considerable support for sterilization in particular circumstances: voluntary or for the control of sexual offenders. During this time, elections in Aotearoa had not been in the offing, and many felt that the key concerns were external, not internal populations. Thankfully, sterilization never came to be.
Photo: Sir Truby King from Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.