Life and death on the Ballarat diggings

More gold had been discovered to the north of Geelong and the west of Melbourne, at a place called the Ballarat diggings. Reports of nuggets lying on the ground and gold dust the size of split peas to be had by the bagful had sent the previously sober populations of the new southern colony of Victoria unhinged, according to newspaper accounts. The Geelong Advertiser reported in that city:

Painters put on the first coat, and then vanish. Plasterers mix their mortar, get impatient, and throw away their trowels. Bricklayers fix their scaffolding, turn giddy with the thoughts of the gold, and descend. Stonemasons adjust their work, handle their tools for an hour or two, and then put on their coats and start. Carpenters cannot even keep at work making cradles, although more profitable than digging. Gold is to be had directly, and no one can have the patience to seek it indirectly.

Every man and they were for the most extreme part men racing to the new field was utterly focused on the getting of gold. A frenzy of tree-clearing, puddling and digging took place, with no regard to anything more than personal profit. By December 1851 the weather had turned hot and the rain had disappeared. The work and the ground became harder, and the early, easy gains slowed. Tensions arose. The licence fees were just one of a plenitude of woes that miners were confronted with, not the least of which was the lack of their own planning for any kind of habitation. Water, that most scarce and precious of resources in Australia, had been squandered and befouled. No sanitation was considered, no civic planning proposed. The administration was inadequate, inept and corrupt. It was the perfect model of greed triumphant.

Into this morass came a young Irish doctor. James Stewart was just 22, a native of County Tyrone, and had trained at Trinity College and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin. Specialising in anaesthetics something that was later directly influential on the history of Australia he was the ships surgeon on his voyage out, a role of great responsibility that saw him act as police officer, magistrate and crowd controller as well as physician. That just three passengers died on his watch, two of them children and thus not overly unexpected, was a measure of his capability. Other ships sailing to Australia at the time often had disastrous outbreaks of disease; one arriving in the same year as Stewarts had 400 passengers stricken with typhus. Ninety died.

Stewart saw his future with the tens of thousands moving to the new goldfield. He was offering smallpox vaccinations in 1853, becoming the public vaccinator; and, first with Dr Sutherland and then on his own, opened a private 12-bed tent hospital. The importance of these Dr Clendinning opened another was crucial. The only other hospital, the camp hospital, had been effectively reserved for the treatment of government officials and administrators. Injuries on the Ballarat field were common and devastating, and those suffering were left to the ministrations of friends or even themselves until the rudiments of welfare were established.

A weekly trauma report in Ballarat at the time might comprise crush injuries, suffocation and paralysis suffered from mine collapses and falls into shafts; asphyxiation from foul air; drowning from inundation and mishap; gunshot wounds caused by accidental and deliberate discharge during hunting or in disputes; and impaling suffered from pick or other implement strikes during shaft driving or again, disputes. Childbirth was fraught.

The mortality rate was high; higher still among children, who had little resistance to the diseases rife in the unsanitary, fly-blown diggings. Butchering took place in the open. There was almost no variety of food, and nutrition was poor, leading to illness. But it was the Eureka Stockade, and the appalling injuries to its participants that was the catalyst for the creation of a hospital that catered to all. The record of Peter Lalors treatment by Stewart and others after the battle describes graphically the procedures of the age.

Three surgeons attended Lalor. A .75 inch calibre musket ball had exploded his left shoulder. He was suffering a grievous loss of blood, had been unattended for hours and was in mortal danger. Hiding at Father Smyths presbytery, it was clear emergency amputation was required. Chloroform was administered by Stewart to anaesthetise him. One surgeon was detailed to hold his brachial artery closed as the arm was removed. There was no antiseptic; the blood was wiped away with cloth and water. An deep incision was made through to the wound, and a flap of skin (the Erichsen Flap) was trimmed from the arm before its removal. The shattered bone was sawn through and shaved down to remove jagged edges, and the arm was removed. Using silken thread, the artery was sewn and sealed and the flap closed over to protect the wound.

In early 1855 the Miners Hospital was established in place of the camp hospital. As a mark of goodwill the army surgeon maintained it until his regiment was dispatched to the Indian Mutiny. After this, Doctor Stewart and others voluntarily took over its management. A permanent building was erected soon after.

Thanks to Nicola Cousen for the background of this article.