Notable Residents | Goodna Asylum

Alexandre Arsène Girault

Alexandre Arsène Girault (9 January 1884 – 2 May 1941) was an American entomologist specializing in the study of chalcid wasps.

An eccentric and controversial figure, Girault was also a prolific and dedicated entomologist. He published more than 325 papers and described over 3000 new taxa from Australia.Alexandre Arsène Girault was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on January 9, 1884, to Joseph Bonaparte Girault and Elizabeth Frances Girault (née Goodwin). He is named after his grandfather, Arsène Napoleon Alexandre Girault de Saint Fargeau, one of the founding faculty of the US Naval Academy. Girault earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1903. From 1904 to 1907 he was employed as a field assistant for the United States Bureau of Entomology. During this time, he was involved in research on plum curculios (Conotrachelus nenuphar), Colorado potato beetles (Leptinotarsa decemlineata), and American plum borers (Euzophera semifuneralis). In 1908, he moved to Urbana, Illinois, where he worked as a laboratory assistant of the Illinois State Entomologist. From 1909 to 1911 (still in the employ of the Illinois State Entomologist), he worked as an assistant in entomology at the University of Illinois, studying bedbugs (Cimex spp.) and Colorado potato beetles. In a paper published in 1908, Girault vividly described an encounter with bedbugs in 1907 in a hotel room in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was reluctant to sleep on the bed after discovering the bedbugs as he entered the room a little after midnight. He eventually decided to keep the lights on and to lie across the bed without getting under the covers. He slept fitfully, constantly waking up to find bedbugs scurrying away after feeding on him. At 3:30 AM, he eventually gave up and slept on a rocking chair. Despite the discomfort, he systematically described the behaviour and stages of maturity of the bedbugs, the general conditions of the room, and attempted to search for eggs and moultings of the insects.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the Government of Queensland requested the services of an entomologist from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), hoping to discover the reason for the failure of the sugarcane crops in Queensland. Highly recommended by his superiors, Girault moved to Australia in 1911. He worked for the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES) in Nelson (now Gordonvale, Queensland) at an annual salary of £400. His main area of study while in BSES was the cane beetle (Dermolepida albohirtum), a pest of sugarcanes; but he also studied parasitoid wasps (his area of expertise and personal interest), as well as some true bugs and thrips. Here, he met and married Elizabeth Jeannette Pilcher in 1911. Their first child, Ernest Alexandre Girault, was born on November 3, 1913.

In 1914, Girault moved back to the United States to resume working for the USDA. He worked in Washington, D.C., on Chalcidoidea systematics. During this time, his wife gave birth to their second son and first daughter, Lawrence Joseph Girault on August 27, 1915, and Helen Joan Girault on August 10, 1917. He strongly disliked the city, describing it as a "bedlam" and "a place unfit for scholarship.

Yet during this time, he also finished his major work, a 900-page monograph on chalcid wasps. Girault returned to Australia in 1917 to work as an assistant entomologist in the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock. He and his family lived in Indooroopilly, Brisbane, where his second daughter and third son were born (Daisy Lydia Girault on July 19, 1925, and Frank Stephen Girault on May 23, 1928).

He never returned to the United States, though he retained his American citizenship. Girault's work was irregular in Australia, including periods of unemployment. This was exacerbated by bad economic conditions in Australia as a result of World War I.

His work at the Department of Agriculture and Stock ceased in 1919 but resumed again from 1923 to 1930.

At times, Girault was forced to work in jobs unrelated to his field of expertise out of necessity (including working as a shopkeeper and as a rock-breaker in a stone quarry). He also increasingly became disillusioned with economic entomology (which also prompted his departure from the United States). He began to include acerbic criticisms, poems, and essays in his papers, resulting in publishers turning his work away and frequent clashes with superiors and colleagues. His love for pure taxonomy, however, led him to publish numerous papers privately.

Most of these were short notes and often printed poorly. His wife contracted tuberculosis while in Australia, leaving her bedridden for years until her death on September 9, 1931. Devastated, Girault's behaviour increasingly became erratic and paranoid.

One afternoon, around 1936, Girault started shouting at their neighbours for hours for no apparent reason. This continued on into the night until someone finally called the police who took him away. Two days later, his sons, Ernest and Frank, drove him to Goodna Mental Hospital.

He was admitted several more times into the asylum. He was on leave from the Goodna asylum in the care of his son until 9 May 1940 when he was admitted to Dunwich Benevolent Asylum on North Stradbroke Island on 16 July 1940 where he died on 2 May 1941 at the age of 57.

His cause of death was officially listed as paraphrenia and exhaustion.

He was buried at Dunwich Cemetery and now lies in an unmarked grave.

Eddie Gilbert

Eddie Gilbert never got to play cricket on the oval at Wolston Park Mental Hospital, but he was drawn there one night as if by the call of an imaginary crowd. The man who dismissed the mighty Don Bradman for a duck in a Shield match at the Gabba in 1931 - the fastest bowler The Don ever faced - was a patient at Wolston Park for 29 years before dying in a muted haze of alcohol-induced dementia in 1978.

In 1937, Eddie married Edith Owens of Pialba. In 1949, Eddie developed signs of mental instability and was admitted to Goodna Psychiatric Hospital in 1949 where he remained until his death on 9 January 1978. Leading sportsmen, including Sir Donald Bradman, attended his large Cherbourg funeral. At his peak, the lightning-fast bowler from the Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg was one of the best-known sportsmen in the country. When he died, he was all but forgotten and hadn't held a cricket ball for years. Yet there was that one night when he went missing from his dormitory and nurses finally found him standing in the darkness on the pitch as if hearing the crowd chant his name just one last time. Admitted on 8 December 1949, he remained there until his death on the 9th of January 1978. Leading sportsmen including Sir Donald Bradman attended his large Cherbourg funeral.

Eddie Gilbert was perhaps the only hero detribalized Aboriginals had in the 1930s.

Edward Benjamin Franz

The story of Edward Benjamin Franz is one of sadness and of his family one of resilience, courage and of never giving up in the hope of a better tomorrow. Much is told about the lives of the German Missionaries but little about the lives of their children.
On 30 December in the year 1844 Maria Caroline Dorothea (nee Weiss) and German Missionary Friedrich Theodor Franz welcomed their newborn son, Edward Benjamin, into the world. The years pass and Ben Franz marries Amelia Walthardt in Brisbane in the year 1867. Of their children, Maurice Bernard was born at German Station and Hilda at Hendra (quite possibly at “Heimat”). Their other children were born outside of Brisbane, possibly at Stony Creek, Caboolture, as Ben Franz was listed in the Qld PO Directory of 1874 as living there.
Ben Franz had been a squatter, a selector, a grazier, a timber getter and the family were the first European settlers of Mount Mee. Standing at today’s Mount Mee lookout, one looks out to the Franz farm. Ben Franz owned and leased land, some of which was Portion 117, a pastoral lease of Durundur No. 2 and part of portions 110 and 12, county of Stanley, parish of Byron. Clearly, Ben Franz worked hard. Timbergetting in the virgin bush of the D’Aguilar Range would not have been easy. Something happened to Ben Franz that saw him admitted to Woogaroo (later renamed Goodna Mental Asylum) and he appears to have been an inmate of that institution for a considerable period of time.
Amelia and the children, seven in total, had to soldier on as best they could. Ben’s upkeep had to be paid for and the children had to be educated and fed. Clearly, Amelia Franz was a woman of substance, was held in high regard in the district and just got on with it.
Late 1889 some of Ben Franz’s land holdings were Court-ordered to be sold off to pay for his maintenance and the maintenance of Gertrude, the youngest child. By 1892, Amelia and the children were living on Portion 117 closer to Delaney’s Creek. Regardless of financial and physical hardships, Amelia ensured that her children received an education. September 5, 1892, daughter Helena became the first Head Teacher of the newly opened provisional school at Delaney’s Creek, and three of the Franz children were founding students.
To add to Amelia’s hardship woes, in 1892 Ben and Amelia’s eldest son, a young man with his future in front of him, got himself in a spot of difficulty with the law for a common occurrence at the time, but one that resulted in jail time if caught.
Ben Franz joined the great majority on 27 July 1898 and his mortal remains were laid to rest in the grounds of Goodna Mental Asylum.
The family remained at Delaney’s Creek with Amelia still farming until her death on 18 July 1905. Amelia was laid to rest at South Brisbane Cemetery.
For the descendants of Edward Benjamin Franz, you are invited to attend the "All Small Schools" event to be held on Saturday, 20 May 2023 in the Woodford Community Centre. One of the schools to be celebrated will be Delaney's Creek. Other schools that the Franz children attended Dahmonga (now Mount Mee) and (Durundur Road now Woodford) will also be celebrated on the day.

Nundah & Districts Historical Society Inc.

John Henry Nicholson

John Henry Nicholson (1838-1923), teacher and writer, was born on 12 June 1838 at Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, the eldest surviving son of John Nicholson, orientalist, theologian and linguist, and his wife Anne, née Waring. He was a nephew of Mark and William Nicholson, sponsor and friend of Leichhardt. Educated privately and at Croft House Academy, Brampton, Cumberland, he was sent at 16 on a sea voyage but left the ship on reaching New South Wales, where among various occupations he tried whaling and gold prospecting. After a brief return to England, he settled in 1859 in Queensland, opening a private school at Toowoomba. Soon afterwards he moved to Warwick where he tutored until 1863 and then started another private school. On 3 March 1860, he married German-born Anna Wagner; they had no children but adopted a daughter. In May 1865 he joined the Board of General Education and had charge of National schools at Nundah in 1865-68, Springsure in 1870-76 and Enoggera in 1877-85.

Between 1867 and 1878 he produced three small books of miscellaneous prose and verse, the first two under the pseudonyms of 'Tadberry Gilcobs' and 'Salathiel Doles'. These books were largely facetious and of little literary merit, the best of them being The Opal Fever (Brisbane, 1878). A volume of undistinguished verse in 1879 was followed by The Adventures of Halek (London, 1882), an allegory, inspired partly by Pilgrim's Progress, of a man's development from sinful worldliness to ideal goodness. Although it attracted much praise from some critics and went through further editions in Brisbane in 1896 and 1904, Halek was never a success and its sequel, Almoni (Brisbane, 1904), fared no better. Both works had fine sentiments and a dignified harmonious style but were too remote from everyday life to have much impact. In April 1885 Nicholson resigned from the government service and in 1886-90 had a private school at Enoggera. Always somewhat eccentric and liable to bouts of melancholia, he spent most of 1891 in the mental hospital at Goodna. Thereafter he continued teaching, mostly privately and at Brisbane, although from September 1893 to December 1894 he was with the government as head teacher at Cambooya. In February 1898 he was appointed registrar of births, marriages and deaths at Nundah. In 1901 his wife died, and on 7 July 1905, he married another German, Anna Cordes, who had been attracted to him while translating Halek and had come from California to join him. Three months after the marriage Nicholson was readmitted to the Goodna mental hospital and remained there except for occasional intervals until he died on 30 June 1923; he was survived by his wife and daughter.

Nicholson's other works included two plays, a humorous mathematical booklet, various prose and verse, and some popular patriotic songs. The English composer, John Ireland (1879-1962), was his nephew. His literary achievement was small but in his time, after J. B. Stephens and Essex Evans, he was one of the leading writers in Queensland.