Would many of the thousands of students, teachers and staff of Northcote High School ever have realised their every-day activities at the school were conducted on the former site of Melbourne’s largest institution for treating alcoholism?
The Northcote Inebriate Asylum (a.k.a. the Northcote Inebriate’s Retreat) was originally a private organisation opened by Dr. Charles McCarthy in 1873 under the provisions of a new Inebriates Act.
McCarthy had argued for some years in medical journals and daily newspapers that the treatment of alcoholism should be addressed as a medical rather than a moral problem, and in turn should be a government responsibility.
With the introduction of a new Government in 1871, McCarthy’s theories gained support with parliamentarians and the Inebriates Act became law, binding an alcoholic to accept treatment for periods ranging from three to twelve months once the court gave an order for his or her restraint.
In December 1872, a property of some 32 acres (13 ha) in Northcote was acquired, although not all of this land appears to have been included in the Retreat itself and other sources put the institution at 21 acres.
McCarthy was appointed medical superintendent of the Retreat, and a substantial two-storey brick building was erected for accommodation of the inmates, and a second wooden building housed McCarthy’s private quarters, a library, and a meeting-room.
Despite the new Act, public support for the experiment was never strong and under public pressure, the government funding stopped after 1874, forcing the trustees to only allow admissions of those who could afford to pay and making a mockery of the Act where compulsory orders for treatment could not be enforced on those who could not pay.
Even amongst the paying patients, few could afford to stay the time McCarthy believed necessary for complete rehabilitation.
By 1877, the Retreat was effectively bankrupt and the trustees hastily – and as it later proved – illegally agreed to an offer from McCarthy to buy the property and for him to continue to run it as a private venture.
After an enquiry into the purchase in 1884, McCarthy was ordered in September of the following year to restore the retreat to a charitable trust, but he was allowed to continue as superintendent and as a trustee.
A new Inebriates Act of 1888 abolished private asylums, but acknowledged that the government had a responsibility for the treatment of inebriates.
Under a later Act in November, 1889 the government took over the Northcote Retreat and its debt of £8500.
Only female patients were admitted (previously, males had outnumbered females four to one) and McCarthy was employed to run it until a new superintendent was appointed in 1892. Inmates were admitted free of charge, but there was no compulsion under the Act for compulsory attendance.
With the number of admissions drastically reduced and Melbourne in the grip of a severe economic depression following the failure of several banks, the Retreat no longer proved viable to the Government and it was closed a few months later.
The buildings remained until demolished in 1926 preparatory to the construction of the Northcote High School; parts of the grounds were earlier granted to Northcote City Council for the establishment of a new recreation reserve.
Unfortunately, for most of the time that the Northcote Inebriate Retreat operated, there was no local newspaper which may have enabled us to assess how the Retreat impacted local residents and whether inmates interacted with the local community.
Details of most Shire of Northcote council meetings were reported in the Collingwood Mercury, which was as close as Northcote and Preston got to a local newspaper before 1888 and mentions of the institution are few and far between, perhaps reflecting the remoteness at the time for the main area of residential settlement.
