PAT JALLAND: AUSTRALIAN WAYS OF DEATH

Pat Jalland has been a Professor in the History Program since 1997. She previously held appointments at Curtin and Murdoch Universities and was a Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University. Her six books and numerous articles include Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914 (1988), winner of the non-fiction prize in the 1987 Western Australian Literary Awards, and Death in the Victorian Family (1996), winner of the 1997 New South Wales Premier's History Award. Her latest book, Australian Ways of Death, was published by Oxford University Press in March 2002.

Death and bereavement are universal and inevitable facts of life for human beings in all societies throughout history, and are among the most important experiences of human life. Yet scholars have noted a tendency in Western societies since the 1920s to avoid the subject of death and to minimize the expression and rituals of grief. Only in the last twenty years has death again become a subject of public concern and discussion, stimulated by the hospice movement, the AIDS epidemic, by new developments in medical technology, and by debates about euthanasia and suicide rates.

My last major book, Death in The Victorian Family (Oxford University Press, 1996/9), which won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for History in 1997, argued that there were essentially two cultures of death in Victorian Britain, which was divided in death as in life by class. In contrast my new book, Australian Ways of Death (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) finds the pluralist experiences of death in colonial Australia richer and more complex than the British. Both books are pioneers in the field of 'death studies' - historians have been slow to contribute to this important new field, which has so far been dominated by scholars in the medical sciences, sociology and the caring professions. The first half of my book on Australian Ways of Death assesses the transmission and influence of European culture and ideals concerning death, especially among the middle and respectable working classes in the developing Australian cities up to 1918. Continuities and change over eighty years are explored - in the causes and rituals of death, funeral practices, and the consolations of religion and memory. Fundamental changes in demographic and religious patterns profoundly altered death practices and attitudes in Britain and Australia between 1840 and 1918. The most obvious aspect of the demographic transformation was that old age replaced infancy as the most probable time of death.

Religion remained central to many middle class people facing death in colonial Australia as well as Britain in the nineteenth century. Many immigrant families to the colonies before the 1880s were profoundly influenced by the European Christian ideal of the ''good death', requiring spiritual preparation and submission to God's will. But large numbers of nineteenth century immigrants had no formal religious faith, while others were influenced by the challenges of science, biblical criticism, evolutionary theory and secularism. The traditional European Christian way of death declined more rapidly in Australia because it was a fragile derivative model which drew little inspiration from its new environment, especially in thinly populated rural areas with few churches and clergy.

The European Christian model of death was least adaptable among the poorest sections of the Australian community. A young colonial culture had less compassion for the aged infirm and dying destitute, and tolerated barbarous treatment of sick and dying paupers in urban destitute asylums. Ideas of social Darwinism and utilitarianism reinforced the triple stigmas in Australia against paupers, former convicts and sick old people perceived as useless to society.

The second half of Australian Ways of Death explores the more robust model of death created from immigrants' personal experiences and responses to the Australian environment. These themes are specific to colonial Australia and represent discontinuities with the traditional European culture. Burials at sea obliged many immigrants to confront the stark reality of the abrupt termination of their familiar British death practices. Shipboard diaries show that all immigrants experienced the harsh environment of the long journey but they suffered differentially in mortality according to class, gender and age. The deaths of infants and young children were accepted with a sense of inevitability and an absence of religious ritual which anticipated the unforgiving conditions of colonial settlement.

Immigrants adapted to a new and initially hostile environment in the bush in more creative and enduring ways. The bushman's view of death has played a significant role in developing uniquely Australian secular ways of death and has been transmitted into the wider colonial culture in the twentieth century. Life in the bush was incompatible with elaborate imported burial ritual designed to disguise the more unsavoury aspects of death. Bush deaths were natural deaths dictated by geography, landscape, isolation, climate and the lack of established cemeteries and churches. A common characteristic of the bushman's approach to death, revealed in bush ballads and Henry Lawson's stories, was a stoical acceptance of death when inevitable, with minimal fuss. Despite the lack of formal religious consolation and elaborate ritual, bushmen usually had a fundamental respect for the dead, and many sought hope in the beauty and regeneration of nature.

The terrible mass slaughter of brave young men in the First World War accelerated the decline of European ways of death in Australia, reinforcing the pragmatic and secular bush responses. Yet a necessary stoicism in the face of bush deaths and the slaughter of two world wars turned a generation later to a chronic suppression of grief and silence about death, from which we are only beginning to recover in the last two decades. Understanding death, past and present, remains a central part of our understanding of our own lives, and those of our ancestors. My next book will take the subject from the Great War to the present, with more emphasis on developments in medical science and the ageing process.