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In Book Takes, authors share three things readers will gain from their books as well as an insight into what they learnt during the researching and writing. This weekend, Jacqueline Leckie writes about her book Land of the Old Black Cloud - and finds among the sadness, there were great love stories.
Blam Blam Blam might have sung “There is no depression in New Zealand”, but Dunedin-based researcher/writer Jacqueline Leckie has found, here at the bottom of the world, it’s got a long history.
Leckie’s Land of the Old Black Cloud is the first cultural history of “mental depression” in New Zealand, covering topics from when melancholia tips into depression through to the unique triggers for it in this country.
“As I researched and spoke to immigrants (and especially women), the themes of loneliness struck me. Being so far away from familiar places, family and culture — the food, the people the colour, the daily habits. The lonely land is not just physical (with our brooding hills, dense bush and windswept beaches), it’s also very much social and cultural.”
As well as her personal experiences, which Leckie is candid about, she has uncovered personal stories going back to the Victorian era of those who have faced the “the old black cloud”. Here, she shares three things from the book that might surprise readers and one thing she learnt while researching and writing it.
The blues are not new
Although depression and melancholia are Western terms, similar terms can be found within other cultures. Is there an epidemic of depression in contemporary Aotearoa? This condition or mood is not new – it has possibly been here since tangata whenua arrived in Aotearoa. Terms among Māori include pōkē, pōuritanga, tiwhatiwha, whakapōuri, poururu, mate pāpōuri and rāwakiwaki, and āhua pouri. Colonisation and loss of land and language undoubtedly intensified mental distress for Māori.
For immigrants, Aotearoa could be a socially and physically lonely land, far from the “old country”. The pressures of poverty, unemployment and childbirth contributed to depression. Julia and Thomas Rowan, from Ireland, lived in a tent during the winter of 1877 in Dunedin’s town belt with their five children. The parents were sent to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum; the children to the Otago Benevolent Institution.
Violence and racism may have tipped some Chinese immigrants over the edge. Richard Treacy Henry, an outstanding bushman and early conservationist, lived on remote Resolution Island. But the isolated environment and his despair at being unable to save endangered indigenous birds was part of the ‘black cloud’ that hung over him.
Desperate remedies
In the past, just like today, many people bypassed doctors to try a plethora of treatments for depression. These included Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup, Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, Holloway’s Pills, Dr Williams’ Pink Pills, Impey’s May Apple, and the highly potent Wolfe’s Schnapps. Dr EC West’s Nerve and Brain Treatment treated “Hysteria, Dizziness, Convulsions, Fits, Nervous Neuralgia, Headache . . . Mental Depression, Softening of the Brain resulting in insanity and leading to misery, decay, and death.” Mixtures with seemingly innocuous names like Daffy’s Elixir, Godfrey’s Cordial and Dover’s Powder contained opiates.
The blues led sufferers to consult “metaphysicians” who might offer psychic healing, homoeopathy, hypnosis, hydropathy or electrotherapy – long before shock treatments were common in psychiatric institutions. Past invasive treatments for severe depression also included lobotomies, deep sleep therapy and addictive and toxic prescription medicines.
The love
Mental depression may have found fertile ground in isolation and loneliness. But I was struck by the love – the aroha – in these stories. In 1866, Waata Pihikete Kūkūtai, a prominent Ngāti Tīpā rangatira told Bishop Selwyn he had consumed a lethal medicine. Kūkūtai became “full of despair” after the death of his beloved wife.
In India, Inder Singh was separated from his only son, Pheru Singh, by the distance between Punjab and Aotearoa and Pheru’s confinement to the Auckland Mental Asylum from 1915 until his death in 1919. The father’s love for his son shines through in his letters to the medical superintendent when he pleaded to be able to bring Pheru home to India.
War also induced depression for some who served overseas and those left behind — yet this also speaks to the care, support and love among whānau. Writers Meg and Alistair Te Ariki Campbell both suffered from depression. Their letters to each other, and their poems, reveal their mutual love and passion, and that for their family and friends.
My insight: the unexpected
You never know what you will and won’t find when doing research. Sometimes this can be put down to serendipity. For example, I never knew until I started the research that my dear friend Pinky Agnew’s grandmother, Jane, was institutionalised at Seacliff, Cherry Farm Hospital and the Orokonui Home from 1923-75, probably admitted with post-natal depression. Neither did Pinky nor her siblings know anything about these decades of Jane’s life. They wanted to. We tried to request access to Jane’s medical records and met a brick wall, even being informed that the records did not exist.
Because of the strict limitations on mental health records today (closed for 100 years after the last entry on file), I had to be resourceful in my historical dive into depression, utilising a wide range of sources such as the memoirs of some of our writers. Perhaps the most unexpected turn for me was the Covid pandemic and lockdowns that inhibited travel and access to archives. Many crucial records are not yet digitised, and now funding has dried up for a service that promised research from afar. Writers, and readers, be prepared for the unexpected.
Old Black Cloud: A Cultural History of Mental Depression in Aotearoa New Zealand by Jacqueline Leckie (Massey University Press, $49.95) is out now.
