Percy Creely was a bushman, working in the Gisborne area, when he enlisted in the Rifle Brigade of the New Zealand Army in October, 1915. He was transferred to the Wellington Infantry Regiment in March, 1916, leaving Egypt with them for France.
It was not long after arriving in France that Percy received the wound which would eventually claim his life. He suffered a bullet wound to his head - possibly from a sniper - and was immediately evacuated, being reported as "dangerously ill" in hospital in England. By October of 1916 he was well enough to be repatriated in the Hospital Ship "Maheno."
It is possible that Percy's wound was the result of an artillery shell - his Battalion was out of the front line at the time - but whatever the cause it was devastating.
Details of Percy's time when he returned to New Zealand can be found in a letter written to the Otago Daily Times by Brigadier-general McGavin, Director-general of NZ Medical Services shortly after Percy's death:
"With reference to the case of Creely: on March 30, 1917 the late Colonel T. Hope Lewis recommended this man's treatment at Karitane. Dr Herbert sent this man to Karitane (as appears in a letter to the medical superintendent) in order that he should be controlled in a manner impossible at Rotorua. Creely was admitted to Seacliff on March 24, 1917, was formally committed on October 3, 1917, and died on October 28, 1919. He was suffering from traumatic epilepsy, the result of extensive wounds of the head, and died in Seacliff of his brain injuries."
Much to unpack, as they say, from the above, which was written to counter allegations of soldiers being interned at Seacliff without due process by the military authorities. His military record has him at Seacliff Hospital, and "dangerously ill," in June, 1917. It was at Seacliff that he was "found dead," the cause described as "Jacksonion epilepsy," which apparently refers to a localised rather than a generalised epileptic seizure. Whatever the ongoing effects before his death, it would seem he was too much to handle at the King George V Hospital at Rotorua.
NEW ZEALAND'S ROLL OF HONOUR.
CREELY. — Rifleman 24/1629 Percy Creely, 9th Reinforcements, 2nd Rifle Brigade, severely wounded in head by h.e. shell at Armentieres on the 2nd. June, 1916; operated upon in France; returned to New Zealand by Maheno on the 19th December, 1916, was paralysed as result of wound; and died from its effects on the 26th October, 1919, brother of H. J. Creely, Upper Hutt. Interment at Dunedin. -Evening Post, 1/11/1919.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
Mr H. J. Creely, of Upper Hutt, Wellington, desires to thank all persons for expressions of sympathy and kindness extended to him at the interment of his brother Percy. -Evening Star, 31/10/1919.
After his death, Percy Creely's case was one of those taken up by the Returned Soldiers' Association. They were highly critical of the treatment in mental asylums of some returned soldiers.
SOLDIERS IN ASYLUMS
Treatment of Mental Patients
Colonel McDonald Hits Out.
(From "Truth's" Dunedin Rep.) From time to time we have heard and read a lot about the callous treatment meted out to soldier mental patients, and the irregular systems adopted for placing them in mental hospitals. This paper has repeatedly opened its columns to full reports of inquiries, commissions and meetings bearing on the sad state of affairs, and was indeed the first paper to ventilate the original case, that of Donald Macintosh, and succeed in having a public inquiry held into the charges made. The revelations as to affairs in asylums in this country in regard to soldier patients are little more damaging than what could be alleged respecting the receptions and treatment of ordinary civil patients in some cases. It is to be hoped that the repeated light and criticism turned on our mental hospitals will have the salutary effect of arousing some degree of public and political interest in the methods and conduct of magistrates, doctors, lawyers and officials who can combine frequently to make of these institutions places more dreadful and soulcrushing than were the bastilles of the middle ages. There are people m the madhouses of this country and Australia who are sane, and there are criminals, who have succeeded
BY PROCESS OF LAW, and without process of law, in putting them there, who should be expiating their crimes in a convict prison. Unfortunately, we recognise that the public is taking everything lying down, and so long as officials and the supine political heads of the country have to deal with an unthinking, prostrate people, so long shall sanity toe the regulated and recognised sense only of the "powers that be" and their agents.
Last week the executive of the Dunedin Returned Soldiers' Association resumed its offensive on the irregularities relating to soldier mental patients. We should, however, state that the offensive was mainly due to Colonel McDonald, Captain Jones, and one or two others, as there are on the executive of the Dunedin R.S.A. many supine characters — lawyers, doctors and business men — who look first to their bread and butter, and think as little of their unfortunate comrades as any of the supine members of the Government.
Colonel McDonald said it was the most unpleasant thing he had ever tackled in his life, but it was the most important question he had come Ii contact with in his 25 years of military life. He would deal with the matter outside of military life altogether. Had he not been impressed with what he himself had seen, he would not have been convinced that the Minister's (Mr. Parr's) letter was nothing but camouflage of the real issue. He knew it did not convey a true impression of what the real issue was, and he was satisfied that grave abuses existed, so that it behoved everyone who called himself the comrade of these unfortunate men to see the thing through, as though they were calling for help on the field of battle; calling as they had actually done to his personal knowledge:
....For God's sake come to our rescue. We are in a madhouse, and if we don't get out we will go mad altogether.
"The position is," said Colonel McDonald, ''that these men were incarcerated in madhouses contrary to law and without authority. As a result some had gone to their death-bed. For that they must place the responsibility on those who sent a man to a madhouse in a disabled condition."
Quoting from the Mental Defectives' Act, 1911, section 120, the colonel showed that a superintendent commits an indictable offence if he receives, or detains, or permits to be detained, any mentally defective person except under Authority of the Act.
Relative to Karatane, he quoted from the Soldiers' Guide, describing Karatane under instructions to the control of the Defence Department, as a place providing pleasant, open-air life for soldiers suffering from a breakdown, and was for the express purpose of keeping them away insane asylums.
The chairman, Mr. McCrae, remarked that the method of admission had the approval of the R.S.A. headquarters.
Colonel McDonald: No association has the right to assume responsibility for allowing its comrades to be dumped into madhouses. I know the strongest exception was taken to it in Wellington.
Quoting from the annual report of Mental Hospitals for 1917, the colonel showed that Karatane had been started so that advantage might be taken of the special skill of the department's officers, but that where mental deficiency was pronounced, the soldier patients would be admitted to a mental hospital as affording the best chance of recovery. In the 1918 report it was stated that occasionally there were
COMPLAINTS OF WRONGFUL COMMITTAL or detention, but in no case did investigation bear them out. Such complaints were generally made by patients whose minds were disordered. The 1919 report, dealing with a summary made by the Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals, divided soldier patients into two classes: Those who were treated successfully without a reception order, and held as voluntary patients at Karatane, or at the Wolf Home, Auckland; and those who could not be properly treated outside a mental hospital, and were committed under a magistrate's order. Some patients in the first class were on the borderline of the second, and those who passed beyond it had to be placed under a reception order in mental hospitals. Sir James Allen, when Minister of Defence, stated in Parliament that cases bordering on the mental were sent to Karatane, some of them under control; and that "in no case had there been a committal to a mental hospital until it was absolutely certain that the patient had to go there, and then only under the usual control." That was an absolute contradiction of the whole thing. The Hon; G. W. Russell said that the Mental Hospital Department acted only after complaints had been made, by the relatives or the police, or other responsible people, and after the patient had been examined.
Colonel McDonald continuing, said that all these documents showed that the authorities had no knowledge of what was taking place. It had been said that the men were taken for their own good and to remove the stigma of having been committed to a mental hospital, but he (Colonel McDonald) had been personally to one, and found the names of every soldier patient, whether committed or not, entered and recorded against him, and everything that could be
DONE TO PUT THE STIGMA ON HIM had been done. By the lunacy clause of the King's Regulations pay ceased when a soldier was described as a lunatic, and he knew of one instance where he found that they had stopped from one man £40. So far as he knew, no redress had been granted to these men. Gratuities were withheld in many cases, and pensions also. "That was the way in which the stigma was removed!" added the speaker.
Colonel McDonald then went on to give several glaring instances of numerous cases that indicated the callousness of control exercised in the mad-houses, and the extraordinary weaknesses, duplicity or ignorance which the Government had exhibited. One case was that of a soldier who was discharged in 1917, and showed that the abuse of power disclosed in his case might be used towards a civilian, merely on the ground that he had once been a soldier. On February 23, he was transferred to Karatane from Dunedin Hospital, after a medical examination had been held. On February 25, he was sent to Seacllff Asylum without being committed. On April 2, he was transferred to Karatane, and on September 5 retransferred to Seacliff. On January 1 he was committed by a magistrate. On March 19 he complained to Wellington of being sent to Seacliff, and said he should have been discharged from Karatane in July. He went there, thinking he would get his discharge, and alleged that they promptly put him in again. In April he complained of his foot, and asked to be sent to the hospital. Base Records took up the case, and the next report was, that the man had died of heart failure. Could any man's heart stand such treatment? In another case, a soldier seeing no hope of getting out of Seacliff, escaped and got as far as Macraes Flat, where the police were invoked to arrest and return him to Seacliff as a lunatic.
"He was kept there for months," said the colonel, "till the time came when the hospital authorities could apply with confidence for a committal. For all I know he is there still. Can you conceive anything worse than where one of our comrades
MAKES A DESPERATE BID FOR LIBERTY he should meet with such treatment? It behoves everyone to do all in his power to enable us to get to the bottom of all this."
Mr. Callan meekly said: "There was no doubt that the authorities knew that they had been in the wrong, but what was there now that they could set right?
Colonel McDonald let the little legal light know that he wanted every entry in relation to their unfortunate comrades made in the books of mental hospitals to be erased, gratuities and other moneys paid where due, and assurance that the like will not occur again.
The following resolution by the subcommittee was proposed:
This executive, while not agreeing with the suggestion that there is any stigma on a man in being committed to a mental hospital as the result of war service, is strongly of opinion that the regular practice of committal by a magistrate should always be followed, and is glad to note that after attention had been directed to the matter there were no more cases of departure from that practice.
The above unsoldierly and colorless resolution was passed unanimously — but only when Messrs. McDonald, Jones and McNish had succeeded in having it supplemented by the following important demand:
That all entries be erased from the records either in or sent from mental hospitals; and that all moneys, pensions and gratuities of which soldier patients have been deprived in consequence of their under the lunacy clause of the King's Regulations be refunded to them, or to their next-of-kin. -NZ Truth, 21/5/1921.
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