Captured: Portraits of Crime 1870-1930 - Flipbook - Page 73
19 01
PA R R A M AT TA
GAO L
D I F F E R E N T F R O M O R D I N A RY
John Mason
BESTIALIT Y
John Mason, a 24 year old labourer from Riverstone, was photographed on 18 March 1901
at Parramatta Gaol after he had been found not guilty of bestiality on the grounds of
insanity and sentenced to be held at the Governor’s Pleasure.
Mason was arrested at Rouse Hill by Constable Samuel Balfour accused of having
committed bestiality with a mare. The matter went before Windsor Police Court on
18 January 1901 and Parramatta Quarter Sessions on 12 February. The Court heard that
Constable Balfour had known the accused for about two years and thought him ‘different
from ordinary people’. Government medical officer, Dr Gibson, had examined Mason and
concluded that he was ‘a man of weak intellect, practically imbecile’. Judge Backhouse
directed the jury to the verdict.
Under the Crimes Act 1900, a verdict of not guilty on the grounds of insanity
resulted in a custodial sentence of an indeterminate period or ‘Governor’s Pleasure’.
The decision to release a prisoner rested with the Governor following consideration
to what extent he or she endangered the community.
After spending a year in Parramatta Gaol, Mason was transferred on
17 February 1902 to Parramatta Hospital for the Insane. Medical case notes describe
Mason as a ‘high class imbecile’. This term, along with ‘idiot’, was used in
psychiatry at the time to describe people who had a developmental disability (in
today’s terms) which were assessed to not benefit from medical therapy. Under the
Lunacy Act 1898, such people were regarded as being of ‘unsound mind’ and therefore,
insane.
Medical practitioners determined the cause of Mason’s insanity to be
masturbation. This was one of the causes and symptoms of insanity as it was then
understood and promoted by the medical profession. Masturbation was thought to weaken
minds and bodies. Acts of bestiality—real or imagined—further heightened the angst.
Eugenicists and social and moral reformers who employed such thinking projected their
anxieties, in particular, upon lower class, young single men such as labourers and
farm hands. Mason, it was observed, discussed his actions without shame and it was
concluded that he had ‘no moral sense’. John Mason was discharged on 13 October 1903
and does not appear again in the NSW Gaol Photographic Description Books, 1870-1930.
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