By Roselyn Fauth
I got a txt message from my friend Jess with a business card. On it was the name of a woman working on an unmarked graves project linked to Seacliff. I wrote to her, thanked her for reaching out, and today we had a phone call. It was a really interesting conversation, we introduced ourselves, talked about what we were each working on, and very quickly realised we shared the same affliction. The addictive pull of the “yes but…” of history hunting. How one question or a single thread turns into side quests, and how those side quests somehow end up teaching you about yourself.
My own journey into unmarked graves research in Timaru has been deeply grounding. It has clarified my values in a way I did not see coming. It has stretched my idea of legacy too. Not legacy as fame, or achievement, or a tidy story. More like legacy as care. Who we choose to remember. Who we refuse to leave behind.
Increasingly, it has drawn me toward the stories of ordinary people. Not the first. Not the most successful. Not the most celebrated. Just people.
I wrote down a heap of notes for future side quest history hunting. And thought before we chat again, I'd better brush up on my knowledge of the mental facility. Today’s “yes but…” led me to Seacliff.
I have been there. We were driving past and turned off the road and up the driveway and stopped at the fence that partitioned the world from the abandoned Seacliff. I did not go in. there were heaps of no tresspassing signs. But to be honest, even with permission, I don't think I would want to look around. I had an intense feeling being there, like I was trespassing just for looking form the road. Not in a legal sense.Like I was intruding on something that did not belong to me. The place has vibes. It felt heavy. It was hard to articulate what it felt like to be there as an outsider.
This is the site of Seacliff Mental Hospital, which opened in 1884. It is also the place where, on 8 December 1942, a horrendous fire swept through a locked ward and killed 37 women. Most died in their beds. Wartime staffing shortages, locked doors, and shuttered windows all contributed. Only two women escaped that ward by escaping out of the roof.
Many of those who died were buried in unmarked graves. I did not take photos. It did not feel like that kind of place. We got back in the car quieter than when we arrived.
Seacliff was not just one building. When people talk about Seacliff, the story can drift toward the dramatic outline of the old buildings or into folklore. That is understandable, but it misses something more important. A system, recognition and making right those who were buried lost in unmarked graves.
Seacliff was part of how New Zealand organised mental health care for decades. People were admitted, transferred, discharged, or died within a formal structure of paperwork, authority, and distance. Over time, Seacliff functioned as a hub within a wider network of institutions, with people moved between wards, farm facilities, and later related hospitals.
While Googling, I realised that this was Timaru's connection with that place.
Timaru did not have a long term psychiatric institution. Like many provincial towns, it sent people away when care exceeded what could be managed locally. Distance was not incidental. Distance reduced oversight. Distance made visiting difficult. For families with limited means, it often made visiting impossible.
Who was sent away? This is the part I have found most difficult to sit with.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, people could be committed for reasons we would now understand very differently. Postnatal depression. Grief. Alcohol dependence. Epilepsy. Intellectual disability. Trauma. Behaviour that others found frightening or inconvenient.
I was sad to learn that some women were pushed into institutions on purpose. At that time, women’s economic and legal independence was fragile in practice, even as laws slowly began to change. Control of money, housing, and reputation often sat with men. In those circumstances, it is not hard to imagine how institutionalisation could be used to remove a woman from the household.
I find myself wondering who was at Seacliff because they were profoundly unwell and needed care that was not available elsewhere. And who was there because of unfair circumstances, misunderstandings, exhaustion, violence at home, or men who wanted to hide their wives, take the household assets, run off, and start new lives.
That question is not intended to accuse any one case. But to raise and recognize how power operates in systems, especially when someone is vulnerable and someone else controls the story and the paperwork.
It is also a reminder that diagnostic categories were not stable. What counted as “manageable” or “fit for discharge” often reflected social tolerance as much as medicine.
Today we still hear of systematic health providing constraints and failures on people. By the time the resources are justifiable for a person struggling, and for their family and friends to help, it can be too late.
As well as people, it turns out Timaru has a connection in built history too.
The same architect who gave New Zealand its grandest asylum also helped shape Timaru’s civic face.
Robert Arthur Lawson designed Seacliff and he also designed Timaru’s Government Buildings in 1879, along with other prominent buildings in the town, some of which no longer stand.
That Timaru stands today as confident and civic minded. But now it could also read as part of the same national mindset that built large institutions and called them progress.
Its a little breadcrumb on my history hunt that reminds me that architecture as well as style, reveals values. It tells us what a society believed order, care, and authority should look like.
The destructive fire of Lawson's Seacliff design is often remembered for its horror, I am not a horror kind of lass so I will move over to what that event teaches.
What happens when convenience overrides quality of care, when people are locked in for the sake of routine and ultimately what happens when resources are pushed and staffing is stretched thin. Sadly I think the fire also showed me how quickly dignity can be lost, in life and death.
In this case, I think the fact the women rest in unmarked graves, is not so much that they were unloved. And more about how they were administratively erased, financially unsupported, or too far from home for anyone to fight the system. In this case, silence, once it settles, is hard to undo. I was happy to learn from my conversation today, that the government is trying to put a few things right and has made funding available to help recognise and mark burals connected to the mental health facilities.
I find learning about mental health history really difficult.
It is not pleasant. Vulnerable people. Horrendous stories. Lives made harder by the very systems meant to help.
But it is part of our shared history. And for many in our community, there will be personal connections. Through family. Through work. Through our own minds. Through the quiet reality that mental health is part of community life.
This part is personal. Probably why I find it hard to sit with. Its not like some random Netflix story that is dreamt up. These are real stories of real people.
Some of my bullies at high school later received mental health diagnoses. I think about that often. I wish I had known then that what they did to me was not about me. It was about them. That does not excuse them. But it does change how I hold the story now, with more complexity and context. I also wish they had received the help they needed sooner. And I wish we understood what they were struggling with.
What changed, and what did not
From the 1960s onward, New Zealand began closing large psychiatric institutions and shifting toward community based care. Planning for new hospitals ended in 1963. By 1973, no additional beds were being built.
That shift was driven by human rights thinking and genuine hope. But it was also uneven. Community services did not always keep pace. Families were often left to carry the consequences of under resourced transitions.
The story does not end with closure though. What I hope this history hunt can offer could be these:
• Seacliff was a system, not a legend. What happened there was shaped by policy, staffing, law, and distance.
• People were institutionalised for complex reasons. Some needed care. Others were caught in poverty, trauma, family conflict, gendered power, and social judgement.
• Buildings tell us what a society values. Seacliff and Timaru’s civic buildings came from the same moment and mindset.
• The fire of 8 December 1942 was not inevitable. Locked wards and conditions mattered. Safety memory matters.
• Unmarked graves are not a footnote. They are a sign of how easily people can be erased when systems fail them.
• Mental health history should reduce stigma, not reinforce it.
• Compassion, curiosity, and care are better guides than judgement.
If you have read this far and it touches something tender, please be gentle with yourself. And if this is your family history, or your own story, I want to say I see you you matter.
Sometimes all it takes is a business card in a txt message to remind us that history is not just about the past. It is what it can teach us, and help us use to make better choices. It is about how we choose to care, now.
Archives New Zealand – Finding Seacliff records guide https://www.archives.govt.nz/research-guidance/research-guides/health/finding-seacliff-records
Architecture and Design
Te Ara – Lawson, Robert Arthur biography (including Seacliff design and Timaru work) https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2l5/lawson-robert-arthur
National Library of New Zealand – Lawson plans for Seacliff Lunatic Asylum (1881) https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23012016
Seacliff History and Context
Wikipedia – Seacliff Lunatic Asylum history (overview) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seacliff_Lunatic_Asylum
Heritage New Zealand – Seacliff Lunatic Asylum Site listing https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/9050/Seacliff%20Lunatic%20Asylum%20Site
Otago Daily Times – The rise and fall of Seacliff (overview of the asylum’s history) https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/rise-and-fall-seacliff
DigitalNZ – Photograph record for Seacliff Lunatic Asylum https://digitalnz.org/records/31927764
Seacliff Fire (1942)
NZ History (Manatū Taonga) – Deadly fire at Seacliff Mental Hospital (1942) https://nzhistory.govt.nz/fire-seacliff-mental-hospital-kills-37
NZ Survivor (disaster summary) – Seacliff Hospital fire, 8th December 1942 https://nzsurvivor.co.nz/seacliff-hospital-fire-8th-of-december-1942/
Additional Reading and Context. (Not all directly cited but useful if you want to explore the wider history further.)
The Spinoff – The story of Seacliff, the most haunted place in New Zealand https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/13-02-2021/the-story-of-seacliff-the-most-haunted-place-in-new-zealand
Te Ara / DigitalNZ – Photograph record (alternative listing) https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/22751/seacliff-lunatic-asylum
Wikipedia – Seacliff, New Zealand (village context) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seacliff%2C_New_Zealand