Leprosy: from the gold fields to Fairfield

Readers please note this article discusses records relating to illness and death.

They came to Victoria to dig. They put in years of strenuous work. Their only symptoms, the aching of tired muscles after long, hard days on the goldfields. Then suddenly, redness about the face, burning sensations through the limbs, hair falling out. The Medical Officer arrives in time to find lesions on the skin and diagnoses, the then incurable, bacterial infection leprosy. 

It’s 1867 and there are thirteen people known to be suffering from the disease in Victoria. They are all male Chinese diggers and so the authorities at first believe that it’s a disease only afflicted on the Chinese population (who refer to the disease as fat-fung). One sufferer is in Beechworth Goal, two in Collingwood Stockade, four in hospital in Castlemaine, three in hospital in Ballarat and three in tents at Clayton’s Hill.¹  

Ah Sing is one of those suffering leprosy in a tent. He was initially diagnosed at Ballarat Hospital and then sent back to Clayton’s Hill to care for himself. Each year his symptoms grow worse, with his feet and legs in the most severe pain. His few visitors include a police sergeant who supplies him and his tent-mate with food and clean clothes. By the time he passes away, he’s been confined to his tent for 12 months. At his inquest he is found to have died of exhaustion from ulcerations and suppuration from leprosy.² 

Report on leprosy 

The year of Ah Sing’s death, Melbourne Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCrea and Resident Surgeon of Castlemaine Hospital Mr. Hutchison, supply responses to a world-wide survey of the colonies for analysis by the Royal College of Physicians. What results is the: Report on Leprosy by the Royal College of Physicians prepared for Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies; with an Appendix. October 1867. 

 

The report can be found in Public Record Office Victoria’s collection. 

“There has been no instance of leprosy undergoing a spontaneous cure in this colony,” said Dr McCrea in his submission. He says that “every class of medicine has been tried.”³ 

Baths don’t have much effect though cold water soothes some sores. He notes that those in prison fare worse on the regular prison diet of oatmeal, bread, fresh meat, potatoes, sugar and salt. Cleanliness is a contributing factor, according to McCrea, it being difficult to keep clean quarters on the dusty goldfields.  

Fear of contagion

McCrea states that “no instance of apparent contagion has been met with in this colony.” He adds “there are no separate infirmaries or asylums for leprous patients” with persons affected “allowed to communicate freely with the rest of the community.” 
Though he notes that often, the rest of the community, don’t want to communicate with those affected - signalling a fear of catching the disease. 

This is also reflected in Valerie Lovejoy’s research for Provenance. In examining inquests of Chinese gold diggers, she identified many other deaths that could be attributed not to leprosy itself, but instead to fear. 

“When Ah Fee became sick, Ah Quoy, a storekeeper at Ironbark village, collected a subscription among the Chinese and had Ah Fee’s tent placed outside the village, because the Chinese believed he had leprosy and feared contamination. Ah Fee refused to go to hospital, and his only visitor was his countryman Hock Pen who placed wood and water outside his tent weekly. He died from pulmonary consumption in October 1864, but it was four days before Hock Pen found his body. The concerns of the Chinese mirrored fear in the European community that leprosy existed in the Chinese villages.”⁴  

Remedies

Mr Hutchison, the Resident Surgeon at Castlemaine Hospital, cited additional remedies tried in Victoria: “…arsenic, Donovan’s solution, cod liver oil, &c., but with little or no effect…I have not seen a single case of true leprosy (fat-fung) cured.” 

 

Hutchison describes two kinds of sufferers. Those whose symptoms worsen in the nose, larynx and air passages causing death by suffocation and exhaustion; and those whose symptoms are mostly of the bones and joints. He also cites other symptoms seen in his patients such as paralysis of the face and loss of sight.

Hutchinson notes knowledge of a European with the disease, thereby confirming that leprosy can affect anyone.      

The Royal College of Physicians determined that leprosy was confined to Victoria and NSW and “…has not been seen in South or West Australia, in Queensland, or in Tasmania.”⁵     

Around Australia

In fact, leprosy was first seen in Queensland in 1855⁶ and Western Australia in the 1880s, the Royal College of Physicians seemingly unaware of this. The Northern Territory then identified a case by 1890, South Australia and Tasmania followed in the mid-20th century. 

 

Fear surrounding leprosy continued to grow among all populations of Australia. So much so that state public health acts in the late 19th century included legislation specific to the disease and separate leper quarantine stations were established.⁷  

Quarantine

A 1951 memorandum by Victoria’s Chief Health Officer cites the fears and misconceptions that arose once cases increased into the twentieth century:

“The term leprosy is one that strikes terror into the heart of most people. We have all been taught to consider a leper as one who is unclean, and whose very touch can contaminate and condemn one to a dread, incurable disease, and to a life shut off from all human intercourse, from the society of those we love and cherish.”⁸  

It is this terror that saw the introduction of quarantines, lazarets and leper colonies across the country; Peel Island Lazaret in Queensland or Coast Hospital leper accommodations in NSW. And by 1897 in Victoria, anyone suffering leprosy was sent to a ‘leper camp’ near Point Nepean Quarantine Station.  

The Advertiser, on 8 November 1912, reported on an elderly man diagnosed with leprosy in Melbourne: “The patient was isolated and removed to the lazarette at Point Nepean quarantine station. The old man now occupies his solitary quarters to await the end...”¹⁰ 

 

The end, said The Argus in 1897, signals “an end of their misery.” The anonymous writer from Point Nepean describes the disease-stricken patients living under terrible circumstances, though they find strength to fish and garden. One of the patients is European, apparently the first European to reside at the station. Past patients, says the writer: “…have tired of life and committed suicide, others have died in the natural order of things and one was sent home to China to end his days.”¹¹   

The few leprosy patients left at the station were moved to Coode Island in the 1930s and then the Exotic Diseases section of Fairfield Hospital in the 1940s¹² once effective sulfone treatments became available.¹³  

A commonwealth facility

In 1951 the Minister of Health wrote: 

“In Victoria and probably in one or two other States of Australia it is only on very rare occasions that a case of leprosy occurs. The accommodation and treatment of this occasional case is an exceedingly expensive business. Victoria has such a case now accommodated at the Exotic Diseases Block at the Fairfield Hospital and the maintenance of the necessary staff for this one case at the Block is costing the State Government somewhere in the region of £5,500 per year as the staff and equipment which has to be provided are sufficient for at least another three cases.”

He proposed a solution to the small number of cases in each state: that they be looked after by a single Commonwealth facility similar to what was being done in the United States at the time. 

This proposal was raised at the National Health and Medical Research Council but received a poor reception and was withdrawn.¹⁴ 

Soon there were 11 living persons registered as leprosy patients in Victoria in 1960, and 23 in 1970. By then, treatments were effective and readily available. The treatments also rendered the disease non-infectious. There was no more need for the community at large to be afraid of leprosy.   
 

Misinformation

A thick Health Department file from the 1970s¹⁵ includes correspondence addressing an article published in The Herald in 1976. The article ‘An old prejudice that just won’t die’ examined the treatment of a leprosy patient by Victorian health officials. The journalist wrote of the: “forced admission to hospital last week of (a) mother-of-five…” revealing personal details and a photo of the woman. 

Doctors of Fairfield refuted the claims and shared through correspondence that they did not follow outdated segregation practices, but rather, they medically supervised patients at the beginning of treatment to ensure no adverse reactions to the strong antibiotics. 

However, the woman’s plight resulted in strong reactions from many members of the public and medical community alike: to both the perceived forced hospitalisation and to the woman’s health being broadcast by the newspaper. A passionate letter from a Queenslander was received by the Health Commission in Melbourne. (The writer uses the more contemporary term Hansen’s Disease as leprosy became to be known, after the Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen who discovered the bacteria that causes the disease.¹⁶) 

“In 1948 compulsory segregation for sufferers from Hansen’s Disease was vetoed by the W.H.O., and all patients on island leprosarium were to be removed to hospital on the mainland and treated as ordinary patients. Australia waited until 1959 to close Peel Island where I spent 2 wasted years away from my husband and young family in compulsory segregation, being treated for a disease that has been proven to be only slightly infectious, if at all…the emotional trauma of just being told you have this disease is bad enough, without adding to the burden by broadcasting to all…Now she will be ostracised, and possibly her children will suffer at school, and her husband may lose his job, which leaves the family in a bad way, and gives her a guilt complex about being the unfortunate victim of a controlled disease, whose fearsome characteristics are kept alive by ignorant and unfeeling people…might I hope that you will soon alleviate the sufferings of (this woman) and her family by quickly stabilizing her on the appropriate drugs and allowing her to return to her husband and children. It seems strange that a person must be made to suffer in this way simply because they have become ill.”¹⁷     

Fairfield’s Exotic Diseases Hospital

By 1978, Medical Superintendent John A. Forbes said that while most suffering leprosy didn’t need admission and could be treated from home, those who were admitted to the Exotic Diseases Hospital were appreciative of the services. 

“We regard it as a sanatorium in pleasant surroundings in which patients can have a reasonable social life whilst commencing treatment. The facilities of Fairfield Hospital next door which are considerable and include rehabilitation facilities and social service as well as laboratory facilities, radiology, etc. form an essential adjunct not always available in other communities.”¹⁸ 

Times change

Medications continued to improve with early treatment proving extremely successful for patients. By the 1980s the medical community sought to change the negative perceptions of the past. A draft leprosy control paper stated: “There is a great need for education of all sections of the community regarding leprosy to remove the stigma currently attached to the disease. Leprosy is an infectious disease which is amenable to treatment…The most important measures are the early detection and adequate treatment of active cases.”¹⁹   

The paper went on to clarify that although some forms of the disease could be transmitted by contact, “there is no need for special isolation hospitals and a short period of isolation may be carried out in a general hospital and thereafter treatment can be carried out on an out-patient basis.”²⁰  

As such, the Fairfield Exotic Diseases Hospital (also known as the Infectious Diseases Hospital) was closed in 1996.²¹ 
 

Today

Leprosy is now very rare in Australia but is occasionally detected in people who have visited or lived overseas in areas where the disease is endemic.²² It is easily treated with antibiotics and completely curable.²³  

We now know that nine out of 10 people are naturally immune to the disease²⁴ (which explains McCrea’s early belief that leprosy was not contagious.) 

More information about Leprosy (or Hansen’s disease as it is known today), can be found on the Victorian Department of Health website.

References

1, 3, 5 Report on Leprosy by the Royal College of Physicians, VPRS 3253 P0 13.
2 Male Ah Sing: Inquest, VPRS 24/P0, 1867/848.
4 ‘The Things That Unite: Inquests into Chinese Deaths on the Bendigo Goldfields 1854-65’, Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, issue no. 7, 2006. Valerie Lovejoy.
6 ‘Pattern of leprosy in Queensland, Australia, 1855-1990’, Leprosy Review, 1991. Ree GH.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1784158/
7, 9, 12 ‘Stigma, separation, sorrow: leprosy in Australia’, Microbiology Australia, CSIRO Publishing, 2020. Jenny Davis.
8, 14 Public Health Division – General Health Branch – Diseases – Leprosy Cases – Accommodation for. VPRS 14836/P0003, H.370/H.
10 ‘LEPROSY IN MELBOURNE.’ The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931) 8 November 1912: 11. Web. 28 May 2026 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5349556>.
11 ‘LIFE IN QUARANTINE.’ The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) 23 February 1897: 6. Web. 28 May 2026 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article9184965>.
13 "leprosy". Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/science/leprosy. Accessed 28 May 2026. Kearns, Susannah C.J., Nash, June E.
15, 17, 18, 19, 20 Public Health Division – General Health Branch – Diseases – Leprosy. VPRS 14836/P0002, H.370. 
16 ‘Chronicles of Gerhard-Henrik Armauer Hansen's Life and Work.’ Indian journal of dermatology vol. 60,3 (2015). Ghosh, Sangita, and Soumik Chaudhuri.
21 ‘Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital’, Darebin Libraries, https://libraries.darebin.vic.gov.au/Darebinheritage/buildings/hospitals/fairfieldinfectiousdiseaseshospital.
22 ‘Leprosy (Hansen’s disease)’ Department of Health, https://www.health.vic.gov.au/infectious-diseases/leprosy-hansens-disease.
23 ‘Leprosy’ Health Direct, https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/leprosy.
24 ‘Leprosy’ Health Direct, https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/leprosy.