An Introduction to Chelmsford Hospital

Commencing in mid-1963, Dr Harry Bailey and his team began treating people at Chelmsford Private Hospital in the suburbs of Sydney. Bailey, using methods he called deep sedation treatment and deep chemical sleep, claimed he could treat a range of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, drug addiction and alcoholism. It was the devastating consequences of these treatments that has ultimately rendered Chelmsford Hospital as one of the worst medical scandals in recent history (Slattery, 1990).

"I felt like he was a bad man who happened to have a medical degree"

— Clare Ray, owner of St Anne's Private Hospital, where Bailey worked before Chelmsford (Fife-Yeomans,1989)

What Happened at
Chelmsford?

A timeline of all the significant events that happened at Chelmsford Private Hospital, from the beginning of Dr. Harry Bailey's career in 1952, to his death in 1985

Our Views
On The Scandal

What we think about Harry Bailey, his methods of treating patients and the fate of the individuals that were admitted into his care at Chelmsford

Literature Review

An assessment of several cases involving the Chelmsford patients, the nurses and the reaction the public had when it was revealed what had happened at Chelmsford Hospital

The Historical Context
Behind The Scandal

A brief history of psychiatry, madness and lunacy, and how that history influenced and justified the events that occurred at Chelmsford

"He told me he had woken at various times during the treatment to discover he was tied to the bed"

— Wife of a Chelmsford patient (Denham, 1985)

About This Website

This website was created for the BMM group project 2015.
All content by Adelle Reed, Aiden Hussein, Katie Saliba, Kirsty Horne, Lauren Kelly and Shixuan Zheng