Published Resources Details
Book Section
- Title
- Jones, William Ernest (1867-1957), psychiatrist
- In
- Australian dictionary of biography, volume 9: 1891 - 1939 Gil-Las
- Imprint
- Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1983, pp. 520-521
- Url
- http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A090518b.htm
- Format
- Description
Published online in 2006.
- Abstract
Quotes:
"For Jones, the psychiatrist was 'the apostle of common sense', whose proper concerns ranged from the imbecile and psychopath to the delinquent and degenerate. In 1929 he conducted a Federal government inquiry into the mentally deficient, which concluded that a little under 3 per cent of the Australian population fell into this category. Jones saw this as a grave threat to national efficiency and advocated eugenic ideals as a remedy, partly through the Council of Mental Hygiene which he helped to establish. At his instigation, the name of the Lunacy Department was changed to the Department of Mental Hygiene, and his own title altered to director of mental hygiene. Although he rejected as impractical compulsory sterilization and doubted whether society would act to prevent the mentally defective from marrying, he proposed eugenic research and urged the 'inculcation of good hygiene in our matings'."
"A man of strong opinions, Jones disliked the 'yellow press', 'professional philanthropists' and 'self-appointed guardians of Public Liberty', and was contemptuous of various non Anglo-Saxon races, especially 'low class Roman Catholic Irish' in whom he detected an 'inherent lunacy'."