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when, as a terrified nine-year-old, she saw her demented mother being dragged from their home
and put in an ambulance, crying and screaming - 'I don't want to leave my children!1
Mary Honeycombe was readmitted to Goodna mental hospital on 12 December. Again, under
custody, she and other female 'lunatics' (as they were called) would have been taken to
Brisbane by ship, accompanied by a policeman and a nurse.
The nurse who generally travelled with these wretched women, who were locked up in a cabin
for the duration of the voyage, was Sister O'Donnell. She was paid six shillings a day. Often she
was incapacitated by being sea-sick, and the policeman had to minister to the needs of the
female lunatics. Two of Sister O'Donnell's charges jumped out of a porthole en route to
Brisbane and drowned. In the ensuing inquiry in 1902 O'Donnell complained that she often had
to stay
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on in Brisbane at her own expense, and as she was often seasick required additional assistance.
She accused the police of using the voyages as holiday outings for their wives. The police
accused her of being unkind to her patients and implied that her seasickness was an excuse for
evading her responsibilities.
Clearly the sea-trip was no holiday for Mary Honeycombe. She may also have had to pay for
the several trips she made to Brisbane and back.
On her arrival at Goodna on 12 December the hospital authorities noted that Mary claimed to
have been doing shift-work and was exhausted. She also said again that people were going to
kill her and that her son (which son?) had been murdered in her house on the night of 26
November. Later reports on Mary's condition said that her memory and intelligence were good,
that she was nimble and assisted the nurses in the wards.
After five months she was discharged from Goodna, on 7 May 1901, and returned once again
to Charters Towers.
But her delusions and mental instability surfaced yet again, in July, and she was readmitted (as
Mary Amelia Honeycombe) to Goodna on 1 August 1901. This time she remained at Goodna
for two and a half years.
Mary's children - at least the younger ones - were kept in ignorance about their mother's
dementia. They were told that she had gone to live with relatives in Lismore, which was about
200km south of Goodna, in New South Wales. Mary may indeed have had some relatives
there, in fact one of her nieces married there in the 1920's. But Willie, Bob, and Jenny (who
was 15 at the end of 1900 and probably worked as a domestic in a hotel) must have known
something about the reality of their mother's plight. And although Bob would not be 20 until
August 1903, he and Willie (24 in 1903) might have protested about their mother's
incarceration and tried to do something to effect its prevention or curtailment. Perhaps they did.
But they never visited her. Nor, it seems, did they offer to care for her when she was due to be
released.
Of course they were poor, and no doubt had domestic and other difficulties of their own - Willie
now had a family of his own to support. And then there was the everpresent problem of the
youngest Honeycombes. For when Mary the mother was taken away, the two little girls, Annie
and Ellen, were taken in by Mrs Annie Chapman - or Granny Chapman, as they were taught to
call her - while Lawrie went to lodge with the Naughtons, who ran a bakery at that time. Lawrie
(aged 12 in 1900) was put to work to pay for his keep and learned the baker's trade - which he
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