About this record
This document is a ‘record of evidence’ completed by May Brown in 1929, which describes the mental state of her brother, First World War veteran Albert George Brown. This record is found within Albert’s First World War repatriation file. May included evidence from others, statement, along with additional evidence from others, including medical examiners and employers. This led the Repatriation Department to accept that Albert’s nervous condition was due to his war service.
Educational value
- The Repatriation Department oversaw pensions, medical assistance and return-to-work schemes for veterans on a case-by-case basis. In the home, families like Albert Brown’s often took on the physical and emotional load of caring for injured veterans.
- Albert returned from the war having endured a gunshot wound to his left knee and he suffered from declining mental health. Albert Brown’s wife Dorcus supported and cared for him and, in the early 1920s, Albert’s sister May came to live with them to help. May Brown’s record of evidence states that Albert’s ‘wife was worried and remarked to me that he would lose his mental balance if he did not get out of the habit of brooding’.
- The Repatriation Department drew on advice from the medical profession and, on occasion, from family members, employers and others when it assessed veterans’ injuries and illnesses. Albert’s mental illness was assessed as being due to war service, but this was not the case for all veterans, especially as mental illnesses were little understood at this time.
- Dorcus Brown, an English ‘war bride’, not only cared for Albert but also for their children, and she relied on dependent benefits to do so. When Albert was admitted to a repatriation hospital, she would visit him, usually twice a week, and take food because she was dissatisfied with what was provided. During the Depression years her children’s pension was reduced. She continued to take Albert food despite the added strain on their finances.
- Albert spent many years in and out of repatriation hospitals for his mental illness, until his death in 1961 at the Repatriation Mental Hospital, Bundoora. Repatriation hospitals, like those Albert Brown attended, were established by the Repatriation Department to provide care for veterans.
