Before the Chelmsford Scandal:
A medical graduate from Sydney University, Dr Harry Bailey moved into the psychiatric field in 1952 and during his studies, became interested in organic treatments of mental illness, such as drug therapy and psychosurgery. A charismatic man, he received a World Health Organization scholarship that allowed him to travel overseas for 15 months studying trends in treatments of mental illness. During this trip, he spend time in Canada observing Ewan Cameron who worked with sedation, psychosurgery and electroconvulsive therapy, and was thereby influenced (Garton, 2007).
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| Dr Harry Bailey (Bromberger and Fife-Yeomans 1991) |
He did so at Macquarie Street, and then in 1963 began treating patients at Chelmsford Private Hosptital in Pennant Hills with the assistance of John Herron early on, then Ian Gardiner and John Gill later on. Throughout his time at Chelmsford Hospital, he experimented with Deep Sleep Therapy and Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy, and his high public profile enabled this.
His reputation emerged from being a member of the Australian Medical Association from 1951, the Australasian Association of Psychiatrists (later known as the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychaitrists) from 1952, the American Electroshock Research Association, and the Pan-Pacitif Surgical Association, as well as being the president of the Sydney Biophysics and Medical Electrocics Society (Garton, 2007).
The perspective on Dr Harry Bailey: Man or Monster?:
When considering Dr Harry Bailey, it seems impossible to disconnect him from the Chelmsford incident due to his principal involvement in the whole matter. However, when one does delve deeper in the scandal and in Bailey’s outside life, factors that put Bailey in a positive light emerge, thus slightly confusing the verdict of his ‘monstrosity.’
From all accounts, Bailey’s experiments were, from his perspective, not completely ridiculous, and it seems he truly did believe in the therapies and their possible abilities to treat certain conditions. He conducted his experiments in a time when some therapies were still under research and development, and there was not yet concluding evidence to believe that Deep Sleep Therapy would or would not work and have such detrimental consequences. Bailey should not be viewed as a fanatic psychiatrist who laughed frenziedly as he prolonged his patients’ suffering for his own enjoyment. But rather, he was an established and educated psychiatrist who may have been misguided early in his career, resulting in terrible actions that were nonetheless done with intentions to help and advance psychiatric therapies. Thus, it is possible to imagine a successful and ambitious psychiatrist wanting to be the one to discover more about such a therapy and believing that with experimentation, a successful treatment would be established for many psychiatric conditions. The fact that Bailey committed suicide also leads to consideration that he was very disappointed with how things had transpired, and felt wrongly accused and persecuted, despite trying to help people (Bromberger and Fife-Yeomans 1991). Another simple yet meaningful factor that draws Bailey in more positive light is the fact that he had two adopted daughters, indicating that Bailey was indeed a man with a certain level of compassion (Garton 2007). And it cannot be ignored that many of his friends knowingly remained loyal to Bailey, despite the controversy that enveloped his life later in his career (Bromberger and Fife-Yeomans 1991).
Despite these factors, it is quite inevitable to maintain a negative judgement on Bailey due to the horrors of the scandal and other factors surrounding Bailey, as will be discussed further.
