This site uses terms that appear in historical records. No offence is intended.

Does your family history have someone who 'vanished'? If you cannot find a death certificate, or if children were raised by someone other than a parent, check mental asylum records. Reasons for admission include epilepsy, head injury, alcoholism, congenital defects, depression (including post-natal depression), etc. Many patients (adults and children) spent only days or weeks in an asylum before being discharged, and descendants would be unaware of that. I've spent many years creating indexes to make the information more accessible.

In Queensland, Woogaroo / Goodna (later Wolston Park), Willowburn (Toowoomba) and Sandy Gallop (Ipswich) asylums created documents whose usefulness varies. Other agencies and government departments created different types of records that are often even more useful. The records vary in content, but some give reasons for admission, and some have superb details about patients' relatives.

Before you check the list of names, please read this explanation carefully:

• Names are from more than 70 series of original records.
• Some of these people were interstate or overseas, but most were in Queensland (Australia).
• Some were in an asylum. Others were only suspected of being of unsound mind.
• The original records are located in archives or libraries in Brisbane (Queensland).
• Dates of documents that I indexed: earliest 1860, latest 1985 (but most are before 1950).
• Names without a surname, eg 'BILLY (Aboriginal)', are listed under the first letter of the name.
• Scroll through the list to find spelling variants. Some names are spelled incorrectly in the records.
• '..' means either 'I could not decipher some letters' or 'name not specified'.
• A question mark means the spelling is in doubt or handwriting is difficult to read.
• Names beginning with 'Mc' precede other 'M' surnames.
• Apostrophes have been removed from names (eg, O'GRADY is listed as OGRADY).
• Some diacritical marks such as umlauts were removed by indexing software.
• If there are multiple entries for a name, there may be multiple people with the same name, or multiple documents (each with different information) for one person.
• For more information, follow the instructions on Insanity Services (opens in a new window), and read my mini-guide 'Researching Mental Asylum Patients'.

Names beginning with: A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   Y   Z

Other Suggestions (links open in a new window)

Many useful sources are listed in my mini-guide Researching Mental Asylum Patients.

Children in Mental Asylums.

Annual Reports of asylums (Queensland).

Other records that I'm indexing (watch for announcements on What's New).

Search this site  (do NOT use apostrophes; read search results page carefully)